
Class Ji L 



Book 







CopigM' 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Burden Bearing 

and 

Other Sermons 



... 

•By t 
JOHN RHEY THOMPSON 



111 



New York: EATON & MAINS 
Cincinnati: JENNINGS & GRAHAM 






f LIBRARY of OONQRESS 
Two Copies deceived 

MAR 30 1905 

^JSopyngnt entry 
GLASS O. jflte/Noi 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1905, by 
EATON & MAINS. 



PREFATORY NOTE 



The sermons in this book were preached ex- 
temporaneously at Grace Methodist Episcopal 
Church, Brooklyn, during the years 1883-84, and 
stenographically reported. 



CONTENTS 



PAGB 

Burden Bearing 7 

The Necessity of Patience 22 

Sovereignty of Purpose 39 

Jesus at Prayer 54 

Outside Losses, Inside Gains 71 

God Seeking Man 91 

The God of Comfort 107 

The Spirit of the Gospel 121 

The Religion of Love 135 

The Greatness of Love 151 

The Power of the Holy Ghost 170 

The Condition of the Beatific Vision 187 

Bishop Simpson 203 

The Credibility of the Resurrection 225 

The Theistic Basis of Immortality 245 



BURDEN BEARING AND 
OTHER SERMONS 



BURDEN BEARING 



"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of 
Christ."— Gal. 6. 2. 

The word "burdens" here is to be taken in a 
large, comprehensive sense. It includes everything 
that weighs a man down or handicaps him in the 
race of life, everything that dwarfs, or hinders, or 
harasses or obstructs him in coming to the maxi- 
mum of his power, in realizing in the amplest sense 
the supreme spiritual ends of his being. 

Innumerable almost are the burdens that men 
bear, and ever shifting and varying are the sources 
whence they arise. Many of these burdens spring 
from the conditions of our earth and time life, from 
the fact that we live a physical life, that we are now 
prisoned in the flesh, and that whatever of power 
or excellence or dignity we may here achieve, it is 
to be wrought out by the union of matter and of 
spirit. 



8 Burden Bearing 

These physical burdens are caused sometimes by 
the necessities of our situation, sometimes we in- 
herit them, sometimes we bring them upon our- 
selves through ignorance, and sometimes they are 
self-imposed in consequence of our willfulness and 
culpableness. But whatever may be the source of 
our physical burdens, a weak body, a diseased body, 
a deformed body, a body feeble in its resisting and 
recuperating powers, a body anywhere short of per- 
fect and spontaneous buoyant vigor is by just so 
much a subtraction from what we might be and do. 

Then, there are the drag-weights that come to 
men and women in consequence of the hard and 
irreducible inequalities of life ; for there are inequal- 
ities of life that are slight and reducible,' and there 
are inequalities of life that are hard and irreducible. 

There are the misadjustments, the inexperiences, 
the mistakes of life that still further increase the 
number of our burdens and impediments. There 
are men who last week hammered out horseshoes 
on anvils that could have governed states; and I 
know one governor of a state that I am sure, in an 
ideal social and political system, would be nearer 
his proper place if he were hammering out horse- 
shoes than governing men. There are men in the 
world with great big brains, full of noble, stirring 
thoughts, who are having a close fight for bread, 
raiment, and roof; and there are men with small, 
teacup-like heads that have nothing in them but a 



Burden Bearing 9 

few little lonesome ideas chasing each other around 
the spacious emptiness, who daily eat to satiety of 
the most luxurious food, of which they neither 
know whence it comes from or what it costs. 

These are burdens. They may be unconscious 
burdens, they may be conscious burdens; but, 
whether the man at the anvil knows that he can 
govern a state or not, and whether the man in the 
executive chamber knows that he ought to be ham- 
mering horseshoes or not, consciously or uncon- 
sciously, the man that ought to be in his right place, 
and is actually in the wrong place, is weighed down, 
hampered, confined, dwarfed by the conditions 
from which, now, it is too late to escape. 

And then there are the burdens which spring 
from the constitution of the household. The class, 
first, that spring from well-ordered households, 
from households in which love reigns supreme. 
There are the burdens that come with the rearing of 
children, where conscience, intelligence, and love 
are given to childhood in the vicarious principle of 
fatherhood and motherhood. But there are infe- 
licitous domestic relations. There are great, pure, 
imaginative women who have lost forever the hopes 
of their girlhood and find themselves tied to brute 
beasts ; and there are great, strong, noble men who 
are doomed to live all their lives long with stinging 
wasps. 

There are the burdens, also, not to lengthen this 



io Burden Bearing 

inventory, such as are described by the apostle in 
the verse immediately preceding the text, where he 
says: "Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault 
(that is, a moral fault, not a mere mistake of judg- 
ment, but in some moral dereliction), ye which are 
spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meek- 
ness ; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. 
Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law 
of Christ." This latter is the heaviest of all burdens 
— the burden of conscious guilt, of conscious moral 
disloyalty, of moral overthrow. The burdens of 
condition, the burdens of failure, the burdens of 
mistake, are light compared with the burdens of 
guilt; and there are many who are compelled to 
carry this burden. 

And yet "burdens" is not, after all, the emphatic 
word in this text. The intensive, emphatic phrase 
is "one another's." It is not to be read, "Bear ye 
one another's burdens," so much as it is to be read, 
"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the 
law of Christ." The apostle Paul gives expression 
to the same truth in the first verse of the fifteenth 
chapter of Romans, where he says: "We then that 
are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, 
and not to please ourselves" — and that is what we 
are all doing, pleasing ourselves ; and yet the apostle 
announces that the very mission of strength is to 
mother weakness, that that to which strength is 
called is to carry weakness, and that we that have 



Burden Bearing ii 

named the name of Christ are not to please our- 
selves. Yet we have all planned our lives so as to 
please ourselves. 

Now, how may we bear one another's burdens? 
There are some burdens that we may not bear; 
there are some griefs, as well as joys, with which a 
stranger intermeddleth not ; there are wounds which 
bleed inwardly, and it is not for us in any exuber- 
ance of ill-regulated zeal to attempt to stanch these 
wounds. How do men bear one another's physical 
burdens ? How do men, for example, who are law- 
yers, bear the physical burdens of hunchback 
lawyers, as I once studied lawyers in a courthouse 
bearing the burden of one who was a hunchback? 
By never referring to his deformity, by never hand- 
ing him his cane, by avoiding everything of that 
kind. They were delicate; they were wise; they 
treated him as though he was six feet high, and 
stalwart and robust. That is the way they helped 
him to bear his physical infirmity. How do we bear 
the burdens of the invalid? By closing the door 
softly, by ascending the stairs quietly, by lowering 
the voice, by getting out of the street car and buying 
the choice fruit or the beautiful flower, by bringing 
her that which she will particularly enjoy, and not 
by talking to her about her sickness, not by talking 
to her about her possible speedy departure out of 
the body; but by so ordering our whole lives that 
she is blest in being an invalid, as she learns in her 



12 Burden Bearing 

spirit the lessons that we who are strong never learn 
until we are smitten. 

And so, with all these burdens of men and women, 
there can be no sympathy where there is no love. 
First of all there must be love for men and women 
just as they are, just as we find them in this world 
about us, real, hearty love for them ; and out of that 
love will come the insight of sympathy, and out of 
sympathy that is born of love, comes courtesy and 
tact and skill in spiritual ethics, and in spiritual 
medication. We need to know how to have our hot 
hearts glow in our faces. We need to know how to 
make the grasp of our hand magnetic, the look of 
our eye tender, the whole spirit of our life brotherly 
and helpful, and in so doing we fulfill the law of 
Christ. 

It does not say "a law of Christ." It does not say 
"bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill a law of 
Christ/' but it says, "and fulfill the law of Christ;'' 
that is, comprehensively considered, the law of him 
who shadowed forth the infinite, the law of his life 
who is now with God and thinks it not robbery to be 
equal with him. The law of his whole being, and 
of the forces and resources of his being, was that he 
carried burdens, that he carried burdens when he 
need not have carried them, burdens that he took 
upon himself; not that he officially assumed them, 
not that he acted as though he were bearing them, 
not as though in a commercial transaction he agreed 



Burden Bearing 13 

to carry so many of them for such and such govern- 
mental results; but that he actually took upon him 
the sicknesses, the griefs, the toils, the cares, the 
burdens of men and women, and carried them in his 
very heart. That is the law of Christ. That inter- 
prets the significance of the incarnation. 

On the basis of this brief exposition, I remark, 
first, that this is a world in which there are many 
burdens to be borne. How many handicapped souls 
there are in this world! How many heavily 
weighed souls there are here! You never can tell 
by looking at the outside of a house what is the 
nature of the family life within. It may look very 
peaceful, beautiful, and radiant, but within all is 
estrangement, alienation, bickerings, wrath. Days 
will pass when the father and mother, even in the 
presence of their children, do not recognize each 
other by look or voice. And so there are faces, like 
houses, that are misleading, faces steeled to indiffer- 
ence, and it is only the practiced eye that can see 
behind this well meant stoical hardness to the ach- 
ing, lonely, heavy heart within. There are souls 
here this morning that reach out invisible hands to 
men and to God for help, for sympathy, for direc- 
tion, for forgiveness, for something to buoy them 
up that they may escape from the sorrows of 
memory or the apprehensions of the future, and only 
they know that they are here who are bearing 
burdens for others in the spirit of Jesus Christ. 



14 Burden Bearing 

Would that there might be some word said; would 
that there might be something sung, would that 
there might be something in the atmosphere of the 
church, would that there might come from the in- 
visible realm helpful and subtle influences that 
would bring peace to some burdened heart in this 
presence ! 

There are those who magnify their own burdens 
and nurse their own griefs, and do not even so much 
as look upon the burdens and griefs of others. Some 
men will say, "This doctrine of burden bearing is a 
doctrine that ought to be preached, but I can't take 
part in it. I have my own burdens to bear." But 
the man who says that is ignorant of the first prin- 
ciples of an ethical philosophy of life ; and the Chris- 
tian man who says that is ignorant of the first prin- 
ciples of the gospel of Christ. He needs to go back 
and learn the A B C's of Christ. He who has 
Christ's spirit and means to live a Christ life will 
not say that he must be excused from bearing the 
burdens of others because he has burdens of his 
own, for the philosophy of Christ is that they only 
shall be lightened in their burdens who help other 
people to carry theirs. 

Have you ever tried it ? It is hard work. Every 
thing that is worth much costs something, and in 
proportion to its value and preciousness is its costli- 
ness. Have you ever when you felt yourself heavily 
burdened, have you ever when it seemed to you 



Burden Bearing 15 

that the ground was giving way underneath you, 
have you ever when you were lonely and grief- 
stricken and weak in body, instead of sitting down 
and nursing your grief, nerved yourself to go to 
those that had greater griefs ? Have you ever with 
weak body and sick heart and faint eyes gone to 
those that had sicker hearts, and fainter eyes, and 
helped them to carry their burdens? If you did, 
you need not be told that when the evening came 
your own were lighter. But they who nurse their 
own griefs and make a luxury of them and seek not 
those whose way in life is harder than their own, 
will have their own magnified until at last in a kind 
of religious luxury of despair or a luxury of re- 
ligious despair, they will be of no use to the church, 
of no use to their families, and to the community, 
except to stand as awful warnings to the young of 
how religion, when abused, may warp and make 
bitter and acrid the whole character. The first prin- 
ciple of the religious life is that if we would have 
our burdens lightened we want to put our shoulders 
under the man's next to us. 

The true test of the divineness of the church and 
the true measure of its spiritual power is to be 
found in its wealth or poverty in the matter of the 
spirit of burden bearing. We have great discussions 
in our time, and I think we are destined to have 
still noisier discussions, concerning this subject, 
namely, as to what are the tests of a true church. 



1 6 Burden Bearing 

We go to our Episcopalian brethren, and they tell 
us that the test of a true church is that you can trace 
your ordained ministers back through all the ages 
to the apostles. Of course, you know the condi- 
tions that our Roman Catholic brethren announce 
for the test of the true church. We go to our 
Presbyterian brethren and we find that their test is 
that one shall not go beyond the Westminster con- 
fession, as witness in a presbytery in Pennsylvania, 
a man did get beyond that, and, although he was a 
minister for twenty-five years and very useful, they 
tried him and put him out. Then we go to our 
Baptist brethren, and they tell us that the true test 
of a divine church is that persons shall be baptized 
by one way, namely, by immersion, and that the 
Lord's table shall be sacredly guarded from profane 
intrusion. There are Methodists who insist that the 
test is that we shall believe in instantaneous con- 
version, or entire sanctification. I tell you if the 
Lord Jesus Christ in flesh-form should walk down 
that aisle and into the altar, and should be asked the 
test of the genuineness of the church which he 
meant to found in the world, he would say, "I stood 
in the midst of the multitudes in Galilee and Judea, 
and if there were any guilty, my heart was open to 
them, however guilty they were. If there were any 
lonely I carried their burdens. If you carry men's 
burdens, this is one of my churches, and if you do 
not carry men's burdens, this is a religious lecturing 



Burden Bearing 17 

association. The true test of the genuineness of a 
church is that men and women in the church shall 
do in this world the work that Jesus Christ would 
do if he was here in person. If they do not do that, 
I care not who ordained them, I care not what 
venerable order laid hands upon them, I care not 
what may be their confession of faith, it is not the 
true church of God. I declare on the authority of 
the Lord Jesus Christ that where the spirit of Christ 
is there is the church of Christ. He who enters 
into the spirit of burden bearing will also enter into 
the spirit of Christ, and he will enter into the spirit 
of Christ only so far as he enters into the spirit of 
burden bearing. 

Every man before me this morning has his own 
Christ, as every man before me has his own God. 
To some of you your Christ is the Christ of educa- 
tion. I mean the education of home and the early 
Sunday school, and those who molded your religious 
opinions in early life. To others your Christ is the 
Christ of the church, the Christ you have heard 
preached to you by doctrinal preachers or by preach- 
ers who established his divinity by proof texts from 
the Scriptures. There are others of you who have 
the Christ of the text. You can refer to texts in 
the New Testament to prove what he was and did 
at certain times and places. There are those of you 
who have a Christ of the imagination. Some of 
you have poetic temperaments, and you have a 



1 8 Burden Bearing 

Christ, neither of the text, nor of memory, or of 
theology, but of the imagination. Such a Christ has 
possibly never lived. There are others of you that 
have a theological Christ, that is, certain statements 
concerning his person you hold to be absolutely in- 
dispensable to a sound system of Christian divinity. 
Speculatively, I would agree with you, dogmatically 
I would accept your statements; but how many of 
you are there that have a living, present, personal 
Christ ? How many are there of you here to-day in 
whose hearts and lives there has entered an actual 
Christ — not one of memory, not one of hope, not 
one of theology, not one of imagination, but one 
of life? 

When the painter, Correggio, was a young man 
about nineteen years of age, he stood one day be- 
fore one of the sublime masterpieces of Raphael. 
As he quietly drank in the silent power and beauty 
of the great picture, as flowers drink in the dews of 
heaven, the artistic consciousness awoke into life, 
and it is recorded of him that as he gazed, instead 
of being appalled by the great picture, he said, "I 
also am a painter." Now, you might take a man in 
whom there was no artistic consciousness before 
that picture, and he would neither interpret it or 
be apprehended by it. There were two things 
there, the picture of Raphael, the artistic genius in 
Correggio. 

I take a man up before Jesus Christ and he sees 



Burden Bearing 19 

nothing — and why? Because there is no Christ in 
him; but as he himself becomes Christlike he will 
more and more stand before the picture, and at last 
say, "My Lord and my God!" But, first, there 
must be some of Christ in us before we can make 
out the Christ of the picture. 

I said he was a. burden bearer. Is he not now a 
burden bearer ? Who told me to use the past tense ? 
who authorized me to teach that once for three 
years, nearly two thousand years ago, on a small 
strip of land between the River Jordan and the 
Mediterranean Sea, he carried men's burdens as a 
kind of a little episode in the history of the eterni- 
ties, but that he does not always carry them ? I am 
not authorized to say so, but I am authorized to say 
that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day 
and forever ; I am authorized to say that he carries 
burdens this morning; I am authorized to say that 
it was not an episode in the divine life that he came 
hither to help men, but that it is the office and func- 
tion, yea, that it is the supreme impulse and passion 
of Divinity forever and forever to carry burdens; 
that love in God like love in men means one thing 
only — the power to suffer for the beloved ; that our 
Father in heaven carries our guilt, our ignorance, 
our poverty, and struggle, and sorrow, and pain, 
and always has, as his Son did in Galilee two thou- 
sand years ago. 

There is nothing finer, nothing more exquisite, 



20 Burden Bearing 

nothing more irresistibly touching, nothing more 
unspeakably pathetic in all the writings of the great 
genius of Scottish fiction than his memorable ac- 
count of the journey from Edinburgh to London of 
Jeanie Deans, and of her pleading before the great 
queen for the life of her guilty and condemned sister 
Effie. All the way from the Scotch to the English 
capital, goes the plain, homely, brave, duty-loving, 
simple-hearted Scotch girl, that never had a doubt, 
as we moderns call it ; that never knew anything but 
just a few plain, rugged duties each day, and could 
not be seduced from the path of duty as her sister 
was, and stands before the powerful queen, and 
pleads for her sister. "O, madam," she says, "if 
ever ye ken'd what it was to sorrow for and with a 
sinning and a suffering creature, whose mind is sae 
tossed that she can be neither ca'd fit to live or die, 
have some compassion on our misery! Save an 
honest house from dishonor, and an unhappy girl, 
not eighteen years of age, from an early and dread- 
ful death! Alas! it is not when we sleep soft and 
wake merrily ourselves that we think on other peo- 
ple's sufferings. Our hearts are waxed light within 
us then, and we are for righting our ain wrangs and 
fighting our ain battles. But when the hour of 
trouble comes to the mind or to the body — and sel- 
dom may it visit your leddyship — and when the 
hour of death comes — that comes to high and low — 
lang and late may it be yours — O, my leddy, then it 



Burden Bearing 21 

isna what we hae dune for oursells, but what we 
hae dune for others, that we think on maist 
pleasantly." 

The Scotch lassie was right, and at the last solemn 
hour of human life only two thoughts will remain 
to comfort us : the thought of the burdens we have 
borne, of the heavy hearts we have lightened, of the 
lonely hearts we have cheered, and the wounded 
hearts we have healed; the other thought, that we 
are going to the high, serene, open, and perfect 
companionship of Him who carries all our burdens, 
by whose stripes we are healed, and through whose 
chastisement we are now entering into the eternal 
peace. When we are dying, backward glancing, we 
will see the men we have helped to live; forward 
looking, we will see the Christ who helped us to 
live. So may we live, and so, please God, may 
we die ! 



THE NECESSITY OF PATIENCE 

"For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the 

will of God, ye might receive the promise." — Heb. 10. 36. 

All high and royal states of soul, all fine and 
precious spiritual experiences, are incapable of pre- 
cise verbal definition. Never until speech shall 
become as subtle and as flexible as thought and 
emotion, will it be possible to construct statements 
perfectly bodying forth the quick, deep, delicate, 
glancing life and kaleidoscopic moods of the spirit 
of man. What is worship ? What is truth ? What 
is love? What is beauty? What is eloquence? 
One may tell what worship does, one may point out 
what love suffers, one may describe what eloquence 
accomplishes — but what is eloquence? What is 
love? What is the high commerce of the soul with 
God called worship ? So is it with patience ; we all 
know what it is, but it is difficult to take that knowl- 
edge out of the realm of spiritual consciousness, and 
put it into words and sentences. Patience is not, 
as some people are wont to suppose, a celestial prep- 
aration or mixture brought hither by angels or other 
celestial beings, and introduced into the soul of man 
as medicine is introduced into his body. Patience 
is not something outside of man and foreign to him, 



The Necessity of Patience 23 

manufactured elsewhere to order, and then intro- 
duced into the nature or essence of his spirit. Pa- 
tience is not an evanescent emotion; it is not an 
intellectual faculty like memory, or imagination, or 
perception; it is a fixed habit, a continued state of 
the soul, in view of certain conditions. It is an evi- 
dence of growth, a sign of self-mastery and matur- 
ity, an infallible token of advancing civilization. 
Savages and children are impatient. The savage 
must have his w 7 ill accomplished immediately; he 
will not brook any delay; he must have his desires 
fulfilled at once. And so our children want no de- 
ferred pleasures. A child is unwilling to wait until 
next week for its joy. It will stamp its little foot 
or cry petulantly to have the promised gift or plea- 
sure to-day. But growing men, maturing men, civ- 
ilized men, are content to wait through long periods 
of time for results. They do not expect fruition 
instantly to follow aspiration, or fulfillment to chase 
eagerly the steps of desire. 

It is almost impossible to compress into words, 
hard, stiff, unelastic, all that we mean by the great 
and noble quality of patience; but I venture this 
as an approximate and yet inadequate definition; 
proper exertion having been put forth in any realm 
of human activity, patience is the power of the soul 
quietly and hopefully to wait for the appropriate 
results. Patience does not demand fruit before its 
time; patience does not demand fruit in the seed; 



24 The Necessity of Patience 

patience does not demand fruit in the germinating 
state, or in the sprouting period, or in the blossom- 
ing time; it is content to wait until the fruit stage 
for fruit — and the power to do that is patience, the 
power to do it quietly and hopefully is the highest 
type of patience. 

Christian patience, so far as it is separable from 
the general quality of patience, is the power of the 
soul, having put forth in the realm of spiritual life 
proper exertion, quietly and hopefully to wait for 
appropriate spiritual results. 

The subject of the text is the necessity of patience 
in the Christian life. What is the Christian life? 
What do we set out to do when we become Chris- 
tians? Not to get a stock of opinions; not to be- 
come correct thinkers on theological and philosoph- 
ical problems; not to avoid guilt merely; not to 
escape punishment only; not at last to reap a bliss- 
ful heaven. It is not to be denied that the natural 
outcome, the legitimate results of a Christian life 
will include many of these things. Earnest Chris- 
tian living will always lead to right practical opin- 
ions; soundness of heart is closely related to 
clearness of vision; we do get rid of the sense of 
guilt in the Christian life ; we do avoid many natural 
penalties of evil-doing, by turning away from evil, 
and we shall at last, through the good will of our 
God, escape the corruption that is in the world 
through the flesh, and have ministered unto us an 



The Necessity of Patience 25 

abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of 
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But primarily, 
we do not begin a Christian life for this purpose. 
We aim at the construction of a character, and of a 
character of a certain sort, after a well established 
type, standard, or model. We do not begin the 
Christian life to construct a character after the Stoic, 
Epicurean, or Hindu type; not merely a character, 
but a character after the fashion and model of Jesus 
Christ. The first and chief work of the Christian 
life is the construction of that kind of a character; 
and that means freedom from guilt, that means 
heaven, that means peace, that means power. We 
do not aim at a single moral disposition, at a sin- 
gle gracious quality. Reverence is not enough; we 
must be honest as well as reverent. Purity is not 
enough; we must not only have a soul cleansed 
from evil, but established in goodness. Self-sacri- 
fice is not enough ; self-sacrifice without the inspira- 
tion of love is hard, frigid, austere, repellent; love 
must be the soul of self-sacrifice, its vital quickening 
power, so that at last we shall come to know what 
is the joy, as well as the duty, of self-renunciation. 

It is contemplated also in the Christian life that 
we should have these qualities in great abundance; 
that these dispositions should be in us in richness 
and fullness and power. The fruit grower is anxious 
not only for the quality, but the quantity of his 
fruit. If a man is engaged in raising apples, he not 



26 The Necessity of Patience 

only wants pippins, and good pippins, but he wants 
a great many good pippins ; if they be Rhode Island 
greenings, he not only wants good greenings, but he 
wants a great many good Rhode Island greenings. 
It is not a question only of quality, but it is a ques- 
tion of a great quantity of a good quality. So it is 
in the Christian life. What did our Master say? 
"Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much 
fruit ;" and the most of us are content occasionally 
to find a single scrawny apple on the boughs instead 
of gathering a great harvest. "Ye shall be my dis- 
ciples," he says again, "if ye bear much fruit." 
The fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, long-suffer- 
ing, gentleness, goodness, faith, and meekness, is 
what he refers to, and of this we are to have not a 
little, but much. Love, not a little, but much of it ; 
joy, not a little, but a great deal of it ; peace, not a 
little, but a great deal of it; long-suffering, not a 
little, but a great deal. It is to this fullness, fruit- 
fulness, and richness of moral disposition that we 
are called in the Christian life. 

The Christian life must also be so inspired, and 
the Christian character so constructed, as that it 
will be radiant, winsome, attractive, beautiful. Our 
Lord Jesus, the model and type after which we build 
our life, was in his moral dispositions gracious and 
winning. He was the chief among ten thousand, 
and the one altogether lovely. His moral disposi- 
tions were of such a peculiar character that he won 



The Necessity of Patience 2.7 

men in his own time, and by them he is winning 
men now. Jesus wins more men for the church 
than the church wins men for Jesus. The church 
is militant, vulnerable, attackable, but he is not; 
and as he by his gracious and winsome moral dis- 
positions drew those who were guilty, care-worn, 
grief-laden, wretched, and vile to him, so we must 
not be content with virtue of an austere, rugged, or 
formal type only ; we must have a beautiful, radiant, 
attractive moral disposition. 

The Christian life has its graces, and these graces 
are the delicate drapery of beauty thrown round 
its sterling virtues. "He that showeth mercy, with 
cheerfulness;" there are those who show mercy, 
but they do it hardly, dismally, reluctantly; but we 
are not merely to show mercy, we are to show mer- 
cy with cheerfulness. "Serve the Lord with glad- 
ness;" and most people do not do it at all. We 
are not only commanded to serve the Lord, but to 
serve him in a certain way ; namely, with gladness. 
Take another passage: "Speaking the truth in 
love;" many people speak it in anger; many people 
speak it with intolerance, with pride, with hate, 
but we are to speak it in love. "Every man, ac- 
cording as he purposeth in his heart, so let him 
give, not grudgingly nor of necessity, for God lov- 
eth a cheerful giver." I have known many good 
men who were large givers, but I have wished some- 
times that I might have been with them when they 



28 The Necessity of Patience 

began to give, and impressed this passage upon 
them, for though they have accomplished much 
good, they have not learned how to give cheerfully. 
Five thousand dollars is always worth ten thousand 
dollars if a man's eye beams and his face shines 
when he gives it. God loves a cheerful giver. So, 
scattered all through the Bible, and especially in 
the New Testament, are these little hints and sug- 
gestions that we are not to be content with a bare 
Alpine height of sturdy, rugged virtue, but that, 
covering the strong granite, are to be seen blossom- 
ing, climbing plants, brilliant with beauty when the 
sunlight strikes them in the morning. 

Do we need patience? Do we need patience to 
build such characters, to live this high, triumphant 
life? Consider the largeness, the complexity, and 
completeness of the idea of the Christian life. It 
includes the opening up and the development of all 
spiritual capacity. It is easy — that is, it is com- 
paratively easy — it is merely a question of energy 
and muscle, to plane a soft pine board with the 
grain. I could almost do it myself. A sharp plane, 
a soft pine board, working with the grain, and 
almost anybody could plane it. But to carve ele- 
gant designs in hardwood, ebony, or mahogany, 
takes time and patience. Well, now, this work of 
developing Christian dispositions sometimes is not 
planing a pine board with the grain, it is working 
against the grain. This building up of a Christian 



The Necessity of Patience 29 

character and living a Christian life is a complex 
work, and the figures are to be delicately shaped 
and exquisitely formed ; it takes time, and it cannot 
be done in a day, much less on a Sunday morning, in 
an hour and a half. Did you ever see a boy mak- 
ing a windmill? For the boy it is a complex piece 
of work; but it is exceedingly simple alongside of 
one of the engines of the Bristol or the Providence, 
of the Fall River Line. I stand in perfect mental 
confusion in the presence of such a machine as that, 
or of one of those great Hoe printing presses, with 
its rods and pistons, its levers and cogs and wheels, 
which I do not understand at all. Recently, when 
I was standing in the presence of one of them, a 
friend asked me what was greater than a machine 
like that. I ventured to reply that the man who 
made it was greater. There is something more com- 
plex than any machine, and that is the spirit of a 
man; the right ordering of all its dispositions; the 
bringing into the realm of obedience to the Master, 
Christ, of all its powers, loves, ambitions, and hopes, 
is a complex work, and it requires patience, time, 
the power to wait. 

Do we need patience? Mark the fineness, the 
delicacy, the exquisite grace and beauty of the work 
that is to be done in us. Fine work of whatever 
sort, delicate work, work in subtle lines of beauty, 
work involving rare and consummate skill, neces- 
sarily involes patience. Have you ever visited a 



30 The Necessity of Patience 

great glass factory? They make window panes, 
common, ordinary window glass, very rapidly. The 
dextrous workman finishes them with a rapidity 
which will surprise you if you have never visited 
such a place before. But workers in glass do some- 
thing else besides making ordinary window panes. 
They sometimes make lenses for telescopes, and it 
takes years to get that kind of glass ready, some- 
times many years. They have to cleanse it, polish 
it, get it to a certain degree of fineness, reduce it to 
a definite form, and remove all trace of impurity 
from it. And it takes many workmen to manufac- 
ture the lenses needed for such a telescope as that of 
the Lick Observatory, or that of Lord Rosse. But 
when they are made you can see more with them. 
You cannot see much through an ordinary window 
glass; you can only see on a level with your eyes, 
you can see the street, or the dust in the street, or 
the houses on the other side of the street, or the 
butterfly and peacock pageantry that sometimes 
passes by. But you can see mighty things through 
the lenses of the telescope ; you can look far into the 
mysteries above us; you can see world on world, 
star on star, and sun on sun ; you can see a great deal 
more through that kind of glass than any cheap, 
common, quickly made glass. Some of you have 
only common window glass to look through ; you do 
not see anything except horizontally and on a level 
with your eyes ; you can see the street, its traffic, its 



The Necessity of Patience 31 

wagons, its glitter and show, its dust, but you have 
not had the lenses of your soul polished up to the 
point where you can see the hidden worlds above and 
around us. 

I never talked with this glass that is found in these 
telescopes; I never had a conversation with it, but 
I suppose, it would complain greatly about its own 
process of development; if it could speak, I have 
no doubt it would object seriously to the manipu- 
lations and the polishings necessary to make it pure. 
So men and women are impatient, fitful, murmur- 
ing, and fretful, when God would polish them and 
refine them so that they could see above their heads 
as well as on a level with their eyes. A good glass- 
blower makes an ordinary tumbler in a very short 
time; it generally requires the boy to be quickly 
ready to take them away and to put them into the 
cooling pan as fast as he shapes them. But when 
he makes a fine, fragile, delicate glass, on which the 
engraver is to write the name of a loved one, he is 
patient and slow. When God writes his name on 
our spirits, they must be brought to the proper 
degree of consistency, and we need patience in the 
previous stages as well as during the time this En- 
graver is actually writing his name. It depends 
upon what kind of work you are going to do 
whether you can do it quickly or not; if it is fine, 
delicate, and precious work, you will have need of 
patience. 



32 The Necessity of Patience 

The spirituality and the individuality of this work 
necessitates patience. It was a comparatively easy 
task for England to acquire East Indian posses- 
sions ; it was not a great feat for France to annex 
Tunis ; it may not be a great feat for her to acquire 
Tonquin. It is not a difficult work to bring under 
a central government an outlying province; but it 
is a difficult and complex work, requiring time and 
great skill, to take the Hindus and make English- 
men out of them ; to> take those Moslems and give 
them the thoughts of Frenchmen, or to take an out- 
lying foreign province and thoroughly incorporate 
it into the life of a nation. It is an easy task to take 
a city if you have battering rams enough ; but it is 
a hard task really to take the men of the city after 
the walls are down. The war of bullets is always 
preceded and followed by the war of ideas, and you 
can fire bullets into men faster than ideas always. 
There is only one way to put ideas into a man, and 
that is by patience. 

The Christian life is of that type ; it is not a mere 
annexation by superior force; it is the free, ethical 
union of our spirits with the Divine Spirit in an 
actual and loving fellowship; our real participation 
in the Divine Life. That takes a long time, for God 
will not constrain any will ; God will not coerce any 
heart, anywhere, at any time. 

It is an invisible work. In the realm of matter; 
in the realm of our practical, secular, and temporal 



The Necessity of Patience 33 

relations, most of our work is visible, ascertainable, 
measurable. If I am leveling a hill, I can tell how 
I get on with it, because I know how much I have 
removed, and how much remains to be carried away. 
If a man is felling a forest, he can measure and 
ascertain every day how fast he is getting on with 
his work. If a man is draining a swamp, he can 
see how he is getting on with his work. If a man 
is building a house, he can tell when he has fin- 
ished the first story, or the second story. If a man 
is acquiring an estate, he can ascertain just how 
rapidly he adds to his land by looking upon acres 
themselves, or he can go to the courthouse and look 
at his deeds. If a man is amassing a fortune, and 
he adds $50,000 or $100,000 to it, there is some- 
thing realizable or palpable in the shape of gold 
or checks or mortgages, or bonds to show its in- 
crease. If a man is a growing physician, there is 
outside and palpable evidence that his practice is 
enlarging. Now, in the realm of the spirit, in the 
realm of worship and reverence and communion 
with the divine; in the realm of obedience to an 
invisible God; in the realm of love, of holiness, of 
patience, of justice, of long-suffering, the work is 
all invisible. It is not measurable by the outside, 
the external; it is not ascertainable by any visible 
or material test ; it is an invisible work, and, there- 
fore, it requires patience. 

It requires patience, because it is permanent and 



34 The Necessity of Patience 

lasting. In the mining towns of the West they 
throw up their rude shanties in a few weeks, but 
they never last long. It takes a longer time to build 
a town of brick houses than it does of rude shanties. 
I am told that in England the houses look as though 
they were built to last, and the most of them have 
lasted a long time. Our houses and churches of 
course will not last long, because we do not build 
them to last; we put them up in a hurry, but in 
England they never build in a hurry. It does not 
require a great deal of time to daub a sign for a 
business house, but it took Angelo a long time to 
paint his immortal frescoes in the Sistine Chapel at 
Rome. You can build a log church in a few weeks 
by the farmers clubbing together, felling the trees, 
hewing the timber, and mortising the logs, but they 
began to build the Cathedral at Cologne in 1248, 
and never finished it until 1880. There had been a 
good many log churches built and destroyed within 
that time. We are building to last ; the temples we 
are putting up are not to be touched by time; the 
palaces we are constructing shall not crumble, God 
is requiring work of us that shall survive the shock 
of death, that shall survive all the contingencies of 
time and chance and change. We are building for 
eternity, and it requires patience to do work of such 
quality that God will think it worth while to carry 
it over into everlasting life. 

We have need of patience. You are here dis- 



The Necessity of Patience 35 

couraged, depressed, disheartened in the religious 
life? What is your complaint? "My temper — I 
am tired battling with it," some one is saying this 
morning; "I have been battling with it for twenty 
years, and only last week it was hot and fiery, bitter 
and stinging;" and another one is saying, "My in- 
sincerity — I do not know whether I inherited it 
from my father or my mother, but I have inwrought 
in the very fiber of my being a habit of being in- 
sincere, and I have been fighting it, and am tired 
fighting it;" and another one is saying, "I lack 
sympathy with men; this doctrine of having sym- 
pathy with men is a righteous, necessary, pleasant 
one, but I cannot feel it?" Another one is saying, 
"My conditions in life are hard; they are harder 
than I deserve; I ought not to have been left in 
these conditions, and I am weary of them; I have 
been trying to improve them for twenty years, and 
I am at a point when I am about to break down." 
One man is fighting some fleshly lust; he does not 
know whether to attribute it to inheritance, to cor- 
rupting associations at school, or to early tempta- 
tions that overthrew him when he came to the city, 
but at last he turned about and has been fighting 
them, and he says: "I am weary and tired of this 
fight with my fiery lusts and swinish appetites." 
Tired! Weary! I can conceive of a young legal 
student, sitting within the railing when a great law- 
yer rises and makes a great argument, and he, 



36 The Necessity of Patience 

looking up at him, will be well-nigh appalled at 
the marvelous intellectual power of the man, at the 
vastness of his legal knowledge, and of his facile 
use of the same. But there was a time when the 
same lawyer, now so eminent in his profession, sat 
where the young man now does, and his answer to 
any questions would be, "The only way I can ex- 
plain it is, I worked hard and kept working on and 
on." Gradually he familiarized himself with the 
knowledge and practice of his profession, gradually 
disciplined his powers, patiently he toiled; and it 
was by patience he came at last to the power and 
knowledge that now make him the leader of the 
bar. And so your temper will at last disappear 
under the power of Jesus Christ. It will not dis- 
appear in the sense that some of you expect it to 
disappear, namely, in the sense that the mettle will 
be taken out of you. Never will Jesus Christ so 
train the human soul as to take the fire out of 
the man, any more than you would train a spirited 
horse so as to take the mettle out of him ; you would 
only bridle and control him. That is what Jesus 
Christ will do; he will leave all the mettle in, and 
teach you self-control. 

See yonder! Who are these arrayed in white, 
nearest the eternal throne ? Who are these, flawless, 
faultless now? Who are these, unstained, unwrin- 
kled, fair and radiant, free and strong, for ever- 
more? Who are these? Whence came they? 



The Necessity of Patience 37 

These are they who, through great tribulation, have 
washed their robes! These are they who, through 
faith and patience, have inherited the promise! 
These are they who once stood where we stand, and 
fought with our foes, and were smitten with our 
sorrows, and carried our burdens, and won at last 
their complete and glorious life! 

Be patient with yourselves, because God means 
to be patient with you. You mean to give it up, 
do you? Well, God is not going to give you up; 
fix that in your minds. You are going to give it 
up, are you? God does not mean to give you up. 
"I can't learn it," and the little girl slams the book 
on the floor. "Yes, you can;" "I can't;" "Yes, you 
can;" and the mother takes the child and explains 
to her, "You can learn it, because I have enough 
love to wait until you do." The real hope of the 
child, although she may not know it, is in the 
mother's patience rather than in her own powers; 
and the hope of man is in the unwearible patience 
of God. Stand fast; fight valiantly, trust, wait, be 
patient. "Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speak- 
est, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and 
my judgment is passed over from my God? Hast 
thou not known ? hast thou not heard, that the ever- 
lasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of 
the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?" Did you 
ever hear that? "There is no searching of his un- 
derstanding. He giveth power to the faint ; and to 



38 The Necessity of Patience 

them that have no might he increaseth strength. 
Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the 
young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait 
upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they shall 
mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run, and 
not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." 
Wait, I say, on the Lord! 



SOVEREIGNTY OF PURPOSE 

"But this one thing I do." — Phil. 3. 13. 

This is the declaration of the apostle Paul. He 
had a purpose in life, a clear, distinct, strong, mas- 
terful purpose ; and in his estimation everything else 
was relative, inferior, secondary, subordinate. 
"This one thing"— not "two" things, or "three" 
things, or "four" things, but "this one thing I do." 
Paul was so situated, he was a man of such endow- 
ments, that if he had been so minded, he might have 
attempted to do a great many things. He was a 
man of remarkable intellectual power, possessed of 
all the prime characteristics of genius. He was able 
to light his own fires of thought, and any man who 
can do that is a genius. We may be sure that as 
large, as expansive and growing an intellect as that 
of the apostle Paul could have found employment 
and delight in many directions. He lived at a time 
and under circumstances and in places likely to 
tempt him to become a dabbler and smatterer in a 
great many things. But he was not a philosopher, 
he was not a traveling rhetorician, he was not a 
Greek sophist, he was not a politician, he was not a 
litterateur, he was not a geographer, he was not an 
art critic. All the questions of philosophy that 



4o Sovereignty of Purpose 

solicit us were as eagerly discussed, and perhaps 
as ably discussed, by the early Greek philosophers; 
they have, in fact, anticipated many of the most 
vaunted conclusions of modern speculative thought. 
The apostle Paul did not trouble himself about 
them. The old Greek system of politics was wan- 
ing, decaying, almost dead; we have no opinion of 
Paul as to the causes of its decline. He does not 
go into any question concerning the genius of the 
Roman government ; he never steps aside at a single 
place to discuss any question that had arisen, or 
might be expected to arise, between the emperor 
and the senate, between the patrician and the ple- 
beian, concerning the extension of the rights of 
Roman citizenship, or any cognate question. He 
visited cities that were rich in art, Ephesus, Corinth, 
Rome, and especially Athens, a city made glorious 
by the supreme and immortal genius of Phidias, that 
immortal worker in marble and gold and ivory and 
brass, but Paul passes no judgment on statue or 
temple. You may search his letters, speeches, ad- 
dresses, and sermons in vain for any opinion on art. 
You would not surmise from anything that we have 
left of the apostle Paul, that he had ever visited a 
city that was made splendid by this great creative 
genius. He gives us no account of the countries 
through which he passed, as Humboldt, or Stanley, 
or Livingstone might have done ; they seem to have 
made no impression on him at all. He never goes 



Sovereignty of Purpose 41 

into ecstasies over any natural scenery; there is no 
indication that any sea, or any landscape, or any 
range of mountains ever made any appeal to him. 
"This one thing I do." He had found a supreme 
purpose for living, he was mastered by it, he lived 
in it, it possessed him thoroughly. He saw all these 
outward things; he knew that Phidias had put his 
best work on the Acropolis; he quoted from two 
obscure Greek poets, but he never mentions the 
name of Socrates. 

This one business of the apostle's life was to 
seize hold of that for which he had been seized by 
Christ Jesus. He had been apprehended by Christ 
Jesus for a certain purpose, and it was the strenuous 
effort of his life in return to grasp that great pur- 
pose. More and more did it outline itself before 
him, and in the presence of that sublime destiny 
everything else was relative and subordinate. "Not 
as though I had already attained, either were al- 
ready perfect : but I follow after, if that I may ap- 
prehend that for which also I am apprehended of 
Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have 
apprehended : but this one thing I do, forgetting 
those things which are behind, and reaching forth 
unto those things which are before, I press toward 
the mark for the prize of the high calling of God 
in Christ Jesus." 

Paul was right. If life means what Jesus re- 
vealed it to mean, if human destiny be what Jesus 



42 Sovereignty of Purpose 

declares it to be, if the cross be what Paul under- 
stood it to be, if the love of God in Jesus Christ be 
what it is declared to be, if man be a spirit, and his 
body an accident, if trade and art and philosophy 
and literature and all things earthly be merely insti- 
tutional, educational, preparatory, if man sprang 
from God, if, after this brief life, which flies swifter 
than a weaver's shuttle, immortality be our in- 
heritance — then Paul was wise and reasonable when 
he declared that he had only one thing to do in life, 
to apprehend these great truths and be ruled by 
them. 

I wish to speak to you to-night on decision of 
purpose, steadiness of aim, strenuousness of action, 
concentration of faculty and power, or anything 
you choose to call it, so that you understand that the 
object of this discourse is to arouse you to some 
supreme purpose in life. This is not narrowness, 
nor bigotry, nor stubbornness, nor opposition to 
progress and growth of knowledge. By sovereignty 
of purpose, I mean that which displaces aimlessness, 
purposelessness, supineness, drifting; it supplants 
the habit of vacillation, wavering, hesitation; it is 
that which gives a man a purpose in life, and holds 
him to it. 

We recognize the necessity for such singleness of 
purpose along all lines of secular activity. The 
gradual enlargement of the field of human exertion, 
the increasing intricacy and complexity of the 



Sovereignty of Purpose 43 

world's work makes it necessary that we should 
narrow the sphere of individual exertions. Human 
life is too short, human faculties are too limited, and 
the work of the world is too vast for any one man to 
attempt successfully to work along three or four 
lines. There never were so many fields open to hu- 
man enterprise as at this time ; nor was competition 
ever so fierce or close as it is now. There never was 
a time when the strain upon men, even when they 
have narrowed their energies to a single channel or 
field, was so great as at this time. He who attempts 
to master two or three handicrafts, vocations, busi- 
nesses will certainly fail. He will be set down as a 
smatterer, a charlatan, an empiric, shallow, superfi- 
cial, who now undertakes many things. If ever 
there was a time when one human mind was equal 
to the task of compassing all knowledge, that time 
is past ; if ever there was a time when any one hu- 
man being was so gifted as to be capable of pursu- 
ing a half-dozen lines of activity at one time, and 
that thoroughly and precisely, that time is past. I 
remember the birth of this sermon. It was about 
two years ago, one morning, when I was very busy. 
A man came to my house and persisted until he saw 
me ; he had one object in life, and I remember very 
distinctly of what his one purpose consisted. As 
soon as I entered the parlor, he began ; he had a new 
process for making soap, and he wanted me to listen 
to him until I understood it, and he assured me that, 



44 Sovereignty of Purpose 

if I should once understand it, I would be glad to 
give him a letter of recommendation as the pastor 
of the church, so that he could sell it to all the 
thrifty housewives in the parish. The next day I 
received a package of patent medicines prepared by 
a quack doctor, with a letter, asking me to examine 
them all, and one in particular, and, if I found it to 
be according to description, to give him a letter of 
commendation for publication. Life is too short 
and human faculties are too limited for any one 
man to thoroughly understand the intricacies of 
soap making, to examine new medicines, and at the 
same time be a useful preacher. You agree that a 
preacher ought not to attempt all these things ; you 
say, "Let him keep himself to his one province and 
master that." So it is with other men; you are not 
any greater or stronger than the average preacher, 
and you can no more spread yourself over too wide 
a field than can a preacher. 

One advantage of having a clear and definite end 
in life, of having a supreme and sublime purpose, is 
that it will enable you to concentrate your energies. 
Concentration is power. The relation of concen- 
tration to power, if I stated it in the nomenclature 
of the transcendental philosophy of New England, 
would be this : it is the relation of cause and effect. 
Mr. Emerson substantially says so in his Essay on 
Power. Concentration is power. The farmer who 
concentrates his energy on a few acres is much more 



Sovereignty of Purpose 45 

likely to make farming profitable than the farmer 
who spreads his energies thinly over a great many 
acres. Some farmers in New England with twenty 
or twenty-five acres live better and make more 
money than many farmers in my native state who 
own one hundred and sixty acres ; they have a nar- 
rower field, but they have concentrated their ener- 
gies until there are no stones or briers or thistles or 
anything else left but productive soil. I say that 
concentration is power. If a man would be a great 
editor, he must be content to be a great editor. Mr. 
Greeley was grandly great as long as he was editing 
the Tribune; he was not great when he became a 
candidate for the Presidency; he made one mistake 
after another until the day of his defeat came. Mr. 
Choate was great at the bar; he was not great in 
the senate, and when he saw it he went back to the 
bar. Concentration is power; it always has been 
power; it always must be power; it is according to 
the nature of things. 

Concentration, sovereignty of purpose, the com- 
pacting of our energies — if I may use the expression 
— gives breadth as well as depth. That is not the 
popular belief. The prevailing belief is that concen- 
tration, the massing of our energies on any one 
given point, will make an intense man, but not a 
broad man. He who aims at breadth primarily is 
not sure of depth, while he who primarily aims at 
depth is sure to secure breadth. If a lawyer con- 



46 Sovereignty of Purpose 

centrates his energies, determining to be first of all 
a lawyer, and all the time a lawyer, it will not con- 
tract his sphere, it will in the end make him broad ; 
but first it will give him depth. On the other hand, 
if he begins by dabbling a little in politics, and dab- 
bling a little in literature, and dabbling a little in 
some outside speculation, and experimenting a little 
here and there, and only practicing law that he may 
make money and get a living, he will never be a 
great lawyer. But if he determines first of all to be 
a great lawyer, he will, perhaps, have practiced but 
two or three years when he will have a case that will 
involve a knowledge of medical jurisprudence. He 
never thought of studying medicine, but now he 
must study it in order to understand his case; he 
comes to the study of it with every faculty alert, 
under an intense strain — he wants to win his case; 
and the result of it is that while he reads it with the 
eyes of a lawyer, he incorporates his new knowledge 
into his permanent intellectual being, and after the 
trial of the case he will know more about the prac- 
tice of medicine, and have a better understanding 
of the science of medicine, than if, as a mere 
dilettante he had attempted to add medicine to his 
profession of law. The case is not different with a 
physician. The physician who determines to be a 
physician, and not something else, is sure at last to 
have breadth as well as depth. He will not have 
practiced his profession a great length of time until 



Sovereignty of Purpose 47 

he will ascertain that he must know something 
about the mind in order to treat the body. He will 
read or study psychology not idly, not speculatively, 
but with direct reference to some patient that he 
wants to heal, and the result of it is that he broadens 
his field. I remember hearing General Garfield re- 
late that there was but a single study which he par- 
tially neglected at college, and that study was chem- 
istry. He said he kept himself steadily to his col- 
lege work; he did not aim at anything beyond the 
mastery of the studies of the curriculum. He could 
not exactly explain why, but he had not been thor- 
oughly aroused at the time to the importance of the 
science of chemistry. The first case that came to 
him as a lawyer involved a knowledge of chemistry, 
and he had to master it before he could try the case. 
The best way for a man to work is to concentrate 
his energies, even if at first he must confine them to 
a very narrow channel. I have seen two kinds of 
streams: one very spreading and ambitious, that 
distributes its waters widely, but ever becoming 
more and more shallow, until at last in its swelling 
vanity to be known as a very wide river, it loses 
itself in a swamp or morass. There are other rivers 
not so ambitious, and they begin by digging a chan- 
nel, and they dig it deep, and they never fret them- 
selves about banks until they are deep enough, and 
then they gradually eat away and widen the banks, 
until, with gathering force, with increasing momen- 



48 Sovereignty of Purpose 

turn, at last with majesty they find the sea. Which 
way are you going ? To the morass or the sea ? 

Sovereignty of purpose will educate the will, and 
the will is the great faculty in getting the world's 
work done. It is not a question of the amount of 
knowledge, after all, so much as it is a question of 
the use of our knowledge. It is not how much 
knowledge a man has, but how much knowledge a 
man can use, that determines his power. The rea- 
son why so many college men and so many book- 
worms are practically so useless is that they have 
never possessed the power to transmute the thought 
into action. There are too many intellectual dys- 
peptics. I meet men who are like I am when I 
have overeaten at dinner — they have read so much, 
as I have eaten so much, that they are distressed! 
They have no power to digest what they read; it 
lies heavy on the intellectual stomach, and it is no 
wonder that they are stupid. It is not a question 
of how much knowledge you have; it is a question, 
after all, of how much knowledge you have the 
power to assimilate and to incorporate with your 
own intellectual being. Will governs this world; 
not knowledge, but will. The men who have con- 
victions, not the men who have opinions, rule human 
affairs. The men who have tenacity of conviction, 
the men who adhere to their convictions with a 
bear-like hug are the men who rule the world. Will 
sways the scepter of the world. It is said that at 



Sovereignty of Purpose 49 

one of his great battles, where Napoleon had sixty 
thousand soldiers, one half of them, thirty thousand, 
were thieves and burglars — that is, thirty thousand 
men whom society would have chained, or kept un- 
der lock and key, were by this one masterful will 
brought into order and discipline and made a part 
of the most splendid army in the world. Some one 
once said to Sir Isaac Newton: "How did you 
achieve your great discoveries?" And his answer 
was : "By always intending my mind," that is, by 
always concentrating his energies on a given end. 
Plutarch relates that Pericles was never seen in 
Athens but on one street, the street that led from 
his house to the market-place and the council cham- 
ber; he never dined out with a friend or accepted 
an invitation to a banquet during the whole period 
in which he ruled Athens. "Concentration," says 
Mr. Emerson — and if you will not believe it from 
Paul or a Methodist preacher, I presume you will 
accept it from Emerson — "Concentration is the 
secret of success in politics, in war, in trade, and in 
the management of all human affairs. The one evil 
of life is dissipation ! its one prudence is concentra- 
tion. The gardener teaches us a lesson ; he severely 
prunes the tree until he forces the sap into one or 
two vigorous limbs ; he does not suffer it to spindle 
into a sheaf of twigs." 

Thus we have gone along together. You substan- 
tially agree with me that along all lines of secular 



50 Sovereignty of Purpose 

activity decision, positiveness, definiteness, and 
tenacity of purpose is a part of wisdom. Now, 
carrying these qualities with you, will you come 
with me into a higher realm ? Will you not consent 
to the statement, that in the higher moral and 
religious relationships and duties, concentration, 
earnestness, decision, a clear and masterful purpose, 
is wisdom? What think ye? When we enter the 
highest sphere, are we at once to reverse the method, 
and say that here a man should doubt and hesitate 
and waver, that vacillation, irresolution, indecision 
shall take the place of definiteness, energy, and de- 
cision? Shall a man in the sphere of worldly 
activity shoot at the bull's-eye, and here fire into the 
air? Is it right for men in other things to decide 
to be deeply in earnest, to be resolute, to compact 
their energies, to deepen the channel, to gather 
momentum and power, but when it comes to the re- 
lationships and duties of the soul to drift and doubt 
and hesitate and postpone and procrastinate and 
prorogue? What think ye? 

Here, perhaps, are half-hearted, uncertain, unsta- 
ble, aimless Christian disciples. Can you say, 
"This one thing I do"? To how many of you is 
religion merely a decorative work, veneering, fres- 
coing ? To how many of you is religion a badge of 
respectability? To how many of you is religion a 
garment that you put on and take off — put it on on 
Sunday morning and come to church with it, and 



Sovereignty of Purpose 51 

take it off when you get home; putting it on when 
the evening of the prayer meeting comes, and taking 
it off when you go home? And to how many of 
you is religion what it was to Paul, the one reason 
why he lived ? 

Here are others who know nothing of sovereignty 
of purpose in the life of the soul. You have been 
wavering, vacillating, hesitating, doubting for years. 
To you, what is God? You have not accepted re- 
ligion; you have not rejected it; you have not ac- 
cepted God; you have not rejected him. To you, 
who is Christ? You have not accepted him; you 
have not rejected him. To you, what is the Bible? 
You have not determined whether it is the authori- 
tative Word of God, or whether it is a fable. To 
you, what is prayer? You have not rejected prayer ; 
you have not accepted prayer. To you, what is 
yourself ? Have you determined this one question : 
Are you a spirit ? What think you, are you a spirit ? 
What do you believe about yourself ? Have you yet 
lived earnestly enough, deeply enough, thoughtfully 
enough to know whether you are a spirit, or highly- 
organized matter ? How many of you know by the 
power of the life of the spirit within you that the 
body is nothing at all but the house in which you 
live? You have not yet decided the fundamental 
question as to what you are. You are twenty, 
thirty, forty, fifty years of age, and you do not 
know yet whether you are an animal or a spirit. 



52 Sovereignty of Purpose 

"Decision flashes upon your counsels" in business, 
in politics, in study, in trade; you teach that a 
strong, controlling, and definite purpose is neces- 
sary to the highest success in all matters temporal, 
but in the realm of the spirit's relationships to God 
what do you say ? "I do not know ; I do not know 
whether there is a God or not; I do not know 
whether I ought to pray or not; I do not know 
whether I have a spirit, or whether I am organized 
matter ; I do not know whether to give my children 
a religious training or not ; I do not know whether 
I ought to swear allegiance to Jesus Christ, or 
whether I ought to look upon him as a mere enthu- 
siast." Is not this the temper of your lives? Do 
you not thus soliloquize? You have agreed with 
me that you ought to decide along all other lines? 
Why will you not decide along the higher lines? 
How important, how unspeakably important is de- 
cision in these matters! These spiritual faculties 
and dispositions alone connect you with God; your 
body does not, nothing physical relates to God; 
your business does not, no cunning or sagacity re- 
lates a man to God; knowledge does not; genius 
does not ; wealth does not ; by none of these things 
do we enter into the life of God. Your body — -you 
leave it here; your store — you leave it here; your 
cunning — it will be of no use over yonder; your 
secular knowledge — it shall shortly vanish away; 
genius — we shall know all things by spiritual intui- 






Sovereignty of Purpose 53 

tion in that life. All the terrestrial concerns about 
which we are so quick to decide are merely relative, 
temporary, educational ; we leave them behind. The 
spirit within us is all that is saved out of the final 
wreck, and you do not yet know whether you have 
a spirit or not; you will not decide even this first 
question, and then earnestly seek to ascertain the 
relation of your spirit to God. I press you to a 
decision; I would incite you to instant and solemn 
sovereignty of purpose; I beseech you to know for 
yourselves whether these things be true or not ; and 
finding them true, as you will, I press you to copy 
and be filled with the spirit of the apostle Paul, who, 
being seized by Christ Jesus for this sublime destiny, 
was ever eager, alert, intense, glowing to apprehend 
it, forgetting all that was behind, and, like a trained 
racer, reaching forth to the things that were before, 
pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high 
calling of God in Christ Jesus. How long halt ye 
between two opinions ? If Baal be God, serve him ; 
if the Lord be God, bow the knee to him to-night. 



JESUS AT PRAYER 

"And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up 
into a mountain apart to pray; and when the evening was 
come, he was there alone." — Matt. 14. 23. 

Earlier in this chapter, Jesus is brought before 
us as overtaken by a great grief. It is related that 
when he heard of the cruel and shameful death of 
John the Baptist, he took a ship and sailed across 
the Sea of Galilee into a desert and solitary place. 
At this period of his ministry Jesus was almost con- 
stantly surrounded by eager and admiring crowds; 
and he felt the necessity, in the presence of this 
smiting sorrow, of seclusion and privacy. All deep 
grief seeks solitude. The freshly smitten heart 
wants to be alone with its sorrow and its God. As 
soon, however, as the people knew where Jesus was, 
they followed him on foot out of all the cities in 
the region round about, and when he saw the mul- 
titude of men and women streaming to him from 
every quarter, with their griefs, and sicknesses, and 
anxieties, and sorrows, and sins, it is said that "He 
had compassion on them and healed their sick." We 
may be sure also that he mingled wise and timely 
instruction with this gracious exercise of his healing 
power. In this grateful and blessed employ, reward- 
ing but fatiguing, the whole of the day was spent; 



Jesus at Prayer 55 

and as it grew to a close there occurred that striking 
and remarkable miracle where, with a few loaves 
and fishes, the great multitude of five thousand men, 
beside women and children, were fed by the Lord. 
As soon as the fragments had been gathered up 
we are told that Jesus straightway — suddenly, as 
if seized with a kind of holy haste, "straightway 
constrained," impelled "his disciples," as though 
they were reluctant about it, "to get into a ship, and 
go before him unto the other side." And then he 
sent the multitudes away ; he did not wait for them 
to go, he told them to go, and sent them away with 
that air of calm authority which at times came to 
him and so overawed the crowd. Then, when the 
evening was come, as the last straggler of the great 
multitude disappeared in the distance, he went up 
into a mountain apart to pray, and he was there 
alone. The sun, perchance, was just disappearing 
beneath the blue waves of the Mediterranean, the 
western sky was all aflame with celestial splendor, 
the clouds were touched with gold, and slowly, as 
day deepened into night, one after another the stars 
of God came out and began to shine in the infinite 
blue above him. Jesus is at prayer ! A holy hush 
is on all the landscape. The Lord is in his holy tem- 
ple, and all the earth is silent before him. Only 
God's noiseless, white-winged angels are there, keep- 
ing solemn watch and ward above the weary Son of 
man. 



56 Jesus at Prayer 

"O, Thou, by whom we come to God, 

The Life, the Truth, the Way, 
The path of prayer thyself hast trod; 
Lord, teach us how to pray !" 

We study this morning Jesus as a Man of Prayer. 
We read in Luke's account of the baptism of Jesus 
by John that, "Jesus also being baptized, and pray- 
ing, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost 
descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, 
and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou 
art my Beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased." 
He thus openly consecrates himself to his public 
work by prayer, by the uplifting of his soul to God. 
We read in another place: "And it came to pass 
as he was alone praying, his disciples were with 
him" — a striking form of expression, as though 
they had come upon him suddenly, and surprised 
him in the act of prayer. It is not to be denied 
that Jesus frequently craved solitude, and eagerly 
sought it, and that when he was alone, his heart 
instantly and gladly refreshed itself in prayer. The 
bent of our thoughts, the color and complexion of 
our imaginations, the direction of the current of 
our affections and desires, when we suddenly find 
ourselves alone, constitute a fine test of the reality 
and depth and fervor of our religious life. If you 
want to know what you are, and which way your 
being tends with the greatest power, observe care- 
fully the thoughts, purposes, desires, and affections 



Jesus at Prayer 57 

that spontaneously arise in your mind when you 
find yourself alone. We read also in the first verse 
of the eleventh chapter of Luke, "And it came to 
pass, that, as he was praying in a certain place, when 
he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, 
teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." 
His diligence and earnestness in prayer aroused 
the attention and quickened the spiritual aspira- 
tions of his disciples. In the account of the Trans- 
figuration scene in Luke we are told that it was 
while Jesus was in the act of prayer that the mar- 
velous change in his face and raiment and demeanor 
began to take place: "And it came to pass about 
an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter 
and John and James, and went up into a mountain 
to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his coun- 
tenance was altered, and his raiment was white and 
glistering." We read also in the first chapter of 
Mark of one of the busiest, one of the most absorb- 
ing and fatiguing days of his public ministry, his 
labors extended far into the evening, teaching and 
admonishing, healing the sick and restoring the 
lunatic. How did he recreate himself for the next 
day's labor? "And in the morning, rising up a 
great while before day, he went out, and departed 
into a solitary place, and there prayed." Again 
we read in Luke: "And it came to pass in those 
days that he went out into a mountain to pray, and 
continued all night in prayer." The night of prayer 



58 Jesus at Prayer 

on the mountain was followed by his formal selec- 
tion and public consecration of the twelve disciples 
to their peculiar and responsible work. In the Gar- 
den of Gethsemane he gave himself up to prayer, 
as no other being ever gave himself up to prayer. 
Three times did he fervently pray for strength, 
that he might be able to drink the mysterious cup 
of sin and sorrow, which was now being pressed to 
his lips : "And being in an agony, he prayed more 
earnestly ; and his sweat was as it were great drops 
of blood falling down to the ground." Amid the 
cruelty and the shame, the sharp pain and agony 
of the cross, he did not cease to pray ; scarcely had 
the cross been placed in its position until he prayed, 
"Father, forgive them; they know not what they 
do;" and as he was about to depart out of the body 
came the last prayer, "Father, into thy hands I 
commend my spirit." 

First of all, the example of Jesus as a Man of 
Prayer emphasizes for us the duty, the beauty, and 
the value of solitary, secret prayer. He loved to 
pray, not only, but he loved to pray alone. There 
can be no doubt that Jesus was fond of solitude, that 
the crowds and cities were with him only matters 
of duty, and that the great temple of nature, soli- 
tude, quiet and deep meditation, the communion of 
his soul with his Father, were the joy and inspira- 
tion and strength of his life. He derived the love, 
the insight, the courage, the patience, and the forti- 



Jesus at Prayer 59 

tude with which he endured all that came to him 
by this devotion to private, solitary prayer. My 
friends, have we learned that lesson? Have we 
learned the value, the duty, and the beauty of secret 
prayer ? We need to learn that no amount of public 
devotion, that no amount of public prayer, that no 
amount of prayer with the family, or in the church, 
or at the prayer meeting, will ever atone or make 
compensation to us for the loss we sutler by refus- 
ing to obey the example and the commands of our 
Lord concerning private, secret, personal prayer. 
This is not strange. Those of us who are parents, 
if we be wise and worthy, and if we are at all 
observant of our children, know this : that our chil- 
dren desire sometimes to be with us alone ; that each 
child, I mean, at times desires to be with the father 
or the mother when all the other children are absent. 
The wiser we are, the worthier we are, the more 
loving, the deeper and truer our insight and penetra- 
tion into the nature of our children, the readier will 
be our discernment of this desire. We will not only 
grant them the privilege of being with us alone, but 
we will encourage and invite such intimacy. Each 
child in the family has its own temperament, its own 
peculiarities, its own desires, its own plans, its own 
temptations, its own experiences ; and the child does 
not like to tell about its difficulties and temptations 
and plans and hopes before the other children, and 
if you are wise there will be long walks, now with 



60 Jesus at Prayer 

the son, now with the daughter, when no one else 
is present except son or daughter. My father was 
not disposed to be over-communicative to me when 
I was a boy, and among the recollections that I have 
that are pleasant now and that help me very much, 
are the times when I had the opportunity to be alone 
with my father, and talk with him about what I 
wanted to be and to do. Do you know that you 
need to see your Father alone? You are nothing 
but grown up children — and the distance between 
ourselves and our children, when compared with the 
distance between us and God, serves to reveal how 
much more we are children to him than our children 
are to us. Grown up children are we all, and our 
stores and banks and offices are simply playthings, 
little toys, of no more final or absolute importance 
than are the tops and tools of our children. O ! if 
we are wise we will often be alone with our Father, 
to be taught, to be refreshed, to be strengthened by 
the freedom of the intercourse afforded by solitude 
and privacy. Our Master, at every period, every 
phase, and every turning point in his experience, 
was equal to the temptations, the trial hours, and 
the strifes, that came to him. Is he to be tempted 
of the devil forty days? He prays at his baptism 
before the trial comes. Does a great grief come into 
his life? He will be free from the crowd, and 
though at first they seem to outmatch him, and in 
their thoughtless eagerness crowd about him, his 



Jesus at Prayer 6i 

heart well-nigh breaking the meanwhile, when the 
evening comes he will compel his disciples to get 
into the ship. He will send the crowd away, and at 
last he will stand alone on the top of the mountains, 
with nothing between himself and his Father. Is 
he nearing the day of arrest, and trial, and death? 
Then he spends the night in prayer. "And being in 
an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat 
was as it were great drops of blood, falling down to 
the ground." And while he prayed the rest slept. 
When the trial hour came the next day he con- 
quered, and when it came to them they were false 
and recreant and cowardly, and failed. The differ- 
ence between two Christian men suddenly brought 
into the presence of a temptation to be false is, that 
the one who overcomes the temptation was on his 
knees that morning, and the man who yields to 
it has not been alone with God for a week. He 
who is alone with his Father in secret shall be 
rewarded in public, and he who neglects to see 
his Father in secret will always be shorn of 
strength in the moment of trial and temptation and 
danger. 

If we should imitate Jesus as a Man of Prayer, if 
herein, as elsewhere, we are to make him the inspira- 
tion and example of our lives, we should have prayer 
as a habit, and we are to strive to form the habit of 
prayer. How did Jesus pray ? He prayed, if I may 
so say, with the free inspiration that is born of rou- 



62 Jesus at Prayer 

tine. Routine observance on the part of the loyal 
man always leads to inspiration; routine work at 
the keys of the organ means, after a while, inspira- 
tion at the keys of the organ, but there can be no 
inspiration until after the routine. Familiarity with 
the technique of painting means inspiration in paint- 
ing at last; but the technique first, and after that 
the inspiration in its order. And so it is with prayer ; 
the routine of prayer, the fixed place for prayer, the 
appointed time for prayer — at last out of these will 
grow a habit and disposition of prayer, so that we 
live in its atmosphere. Jesus prayed with freshness 
and spontaneity, but the basis of that spontaneity 
would be found, had we the particulars of his daily 
Nazareth life, in the faithfulness with which he 
observed the routine of prayer. He was fixed, 
established, grounded in the habit of prayer, and 
the moment he was alone he was praying. Prayer 
with us is an exceptional, an occasional experience. 
How few of us live in the atmosphere of prayer, how 
few of us abide in it, how few of us have graduated 
from the routine of prayer into the realm of inspira- 
tional prayer! I preach to those who are able to 
receive it that there are no necessary nor mechanical 
times and seasons for prayer; but alas! there are 
very few able to receive it. No one is able to re- 
ceive it who has not first drilled himself by routine 
observance into such a spiritual and prayerful dispo- 
sition, that his whole life is lived in that atmosphere. 



Jesus at Prayer 63 

He need not have fixed times for prayer — like Jesus 
he will spontaneously pray. 

There are people who reserve prayer for the emer- 
gencies of life. I knew a man, a good man, a mem- 
ber of the church, a communicant, a prayerful man, 
as church people ordinarily go, who passed through 
a threatening and menacing experience in his busi- 
ness for two or three weeks, and he prayed more in 
that time than he had prayed for fifteen or twenty 
years. He confessed as much to me, and he regarded 
it as an honorable confession. When his business 
affairs turned out as he desired he told me that it 
was because he prayed so much and so earnestly; 
he believed that God had answered his prayers as 
against the other man — for it was a question where 
one must go down if the other went up. That is 
not Christian prayer, it is superstition, it is necro- 
mancy, it is magic, it is anything but Christian 
prayer. A man finds himself in a narrow and hard 
place as against another man, and as one or the other 
of them must go down, he goes to work and prays ; 
both are members of the church, one is a Congre- 
gationalism and the other is a Methodist, and finally, 
by dint of hard praying for two weeks, the Meth- 
odist beats the Congregationalist ! Why, that is 
wretched superstition; that is not prayer at all. 
Prayer is something more than the use of Omnip- 
otence for the purpose of outwitting your brother. 
There are those who reserve prayer for the emer- 



64 Jesus at Prayer 

gency of death. There are those that reserve prayer 
for the emergency of grief. My brethren, it should 
not be so; our lives should be suffused with the 
spirit of prayer; the perfume of prayer should be 
on the whole of life, on its sorrows and its joys, on 
its successes and on its defeats, on our studies, on 
our recreations, on all that we have, or do, or think, 
or become ; we should live our whole life in the very 
air of prayer. Do we not need it ? Are you satis- 
fied with your moral stature ? Are you content with 
your spiritual state? Do you find it easy to live 
your life ? And do you find it easy to live it, because 
it is so low in tone ? Try earnestly to live a real life, 
try for one whole day to fulfill one single command, 
in the spirit as well as the letter — "Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself," bind yourself to keep that 
for twenty-four hours, and you will learn the need 
of prayer. If He needed to pray, how much more 
do we ! If he, in the presence of temptation, needed 
to pray, how much more do I need to pray in the 
presence of temptation ! If he needed to be in soli- 
tude and prayer when grief came, that he might 
know what it meant, how much more do I need to 
go away from the crowd, to be alone with my grief 
and my God, that I may know what it means. If 
we would escape the corruption of the world, if 
we would build ourselves up in all virtue and god- 
liness, we must like him drill ourselves into the habit 
of prayer, so that prayer shall live in us, so that 



Jesus at Prayer 65 

prayer may be the very breath of our lives, so that 
when we are asked when we pray, and how often, 
and how long, we may be able to smile at the ques- 
tions, because our whole life and mind shall be a 
thanksgiving to the Power that made us. 

The example of Jesus as a man of prayer teaches 
us that we are to seek our Father alone with nature. 
Where did Jesus pray? In desert places. Have 
you ever read a description of one of these desert 
places, on the eastern side of the Sea of Gennesa- 
ret, whither Jesus oftentimes resorted for secret 
prayer? It will be good reading for you to take 
your Farrar's or Geikie's Life of Jesus this after- 
noon and read what a barren, desolate, and forbid- 
ding region it was. If ever you have traveled much, 
and especially in the country, you know that when 
you reached a desolate region it was hard to pray. 
He loved the mountains, and prayed on their sides 
and on their summits ; he loved the sea, and prayed 
on its pebbly beach; he loved nature, and he loved 
to be alone with his Father and with nature. He 
did not disparage or despise the temple or the syna- 
gogue. He never sought to cast any odium on pub- 
lic or consecrated places; but, as for himself, he 
preferred to pray in the great temple of the Uni- 
verse. This lesson also we need to learn. We are 
all being insensibly affected by this city life of ours. 
These long rows of houses, these paved streets, this 
little patch of blue sky, that we see perhaps once a 



66 Jesus at Prayer 

fortnight, is slowly and unfavorably affecting us, 

cramping and dwarfing us, making us conventional, 

artificial, unreal, mechanical. Bryant was right; 

nature does calm us : 

"She glides 
Into our darker musings, with a mild 
And healing sympathy, that steals away 
Their sharpness ere we are aware." 

There is that in nature, and there is that in com- 
munion with nature, which none of us can afford to 
dispense with, either in the foundation or the build- 
ing of character. I count that man fortunate who 
was born within sight of the mighty sea or a lofty 
range of mountains. The German, Jean Paul, says 
that "Music dilates the heart to its whole capacity 
for the Infinite." So does the sea to the child, and 
so will a lofty range of mountains to a young and 
growing soul. Happy is that man who, whether by 
music, or by eloquence, or by the sea, or by the 
mountains, has had his heart dilated to its whole 
capacity for the Infinite! Without these three 
things no great, or strong, or deep, or fruitful char- 
acter can be built — Solitude, Communion with Na- 
ture, Prayer to Almighty God. All other characters 
are weak, feverish, unreal, unequal to life's heavy 
tasks, and yield when suddenly brought under 
pressure. The great, strong, deep, calm, mighty 
souls have been those that dared to be alone ; those 
who loved the sea, and the mountains, and the sky ; 



Jesus at Prayer 67 

those that under the mystic azure arch have prayed 
to God. There is an added solemnity, a heightened 
reality, to life and love, to work and duty, to prayer 
and God, as we stand under the unfretting stars, 
seeming to whisper, "Peace, peace, troubled soul! 
Immortality is not far away!" 

Finally, the example of Jesus as a Man of Prayer 
teaches us that we are to make provision for fitting 
times and occasions to pray, and that we are to give 
ourselves to securing those times with firmness and 
earnestness. I recall your attention to the teaching 
of the text and context: "And they that had eaten 
were about five thousand men, beside women and 
children. And Jesus straightway constrained" — 
that is, compelled — "his disciples to get into a ship, 
and to go before him unto the other side, while he 
sent the multitudes away." He seems to have been 
seized with a holy impulse, with a divine fervor. 
As a hungry man, long abstaining from food by en- 
forcement, draws near at last to a table filled with 
bounties, and is impatient, so does his soul, that had 
all day long carried its lonely grief over the death 
of John the Baptist, now at last cry out, "I must 
have my Father!" The disciples are gone. He 
sends the multitude away, and at once he seeks 
prayer with God. O, how our prayers contrast with 
his ! How veined they are with insincerity ! How 
cold they are ! How formal, how lifeless, how per- 
functory, how official, how weak! How few of us 



68 Jesus at Prayer 

have ever learned to send the multitude away, if 
not the multitude of people, then the multitude of 
distracting thoughts. We make a feeble, languid, 
sickly effort to dispossess our mind, and so we seek 
to appease our conscience. We kneel down to offer 
a few hurried words of prayer, and all the time we 
hear the worldly voices, or the tramp of hurrying 
feet, and we are not alone with our God ; nor do we 
have the time, the patience, the strenuousness of 
faith required to say to this crowd of thoughts about 
gold, and honor, and wealth, and ease, and pleasure, 
"Leave me I" How long has it been since by fore- 
sight you saved an hour to be alone with God ? How 
superficial our prayers are! Alas! how many use 
prayer merely as a spell, as a kind of cabalistic word 
or necromancy, like some Eastern magician or Afri- 
can fetish worshiper; we rush through the list of 
the charmed words, vainly and superstitiously imag- 
ining that because we have said them we have 
averted the wrath of an angry God. What a humil- 
iation of prayer that is ! How many use prayer as 
a charm, as the ignorant savage hangs about his 
neck his string of beads to keep off the demons and 
the evil spirits that otherwise might consume him! 
How many there are who use prayer simply that 
they may have their children live longer ; how many 
use prayer that the new business scheme may be 
prospered ; how many use prayer that they may have 
an advantage over a rival! Again, I say, this is 



Jesus at Prayer 69 

not prayer; it is superstition, gross and debauch- 
ing. Prayer is communion with God, prayer is the 
uplifting of the soul until it is in God's presence 
consciously, prayer is that spiritual exercise by 
which a man enters into joyous and purifying com- 
munion with the great Spirit of the universe, and 
the best prayer of all prayers asks nothing, it loves 
and adores and worships, and thus is gradually 
transformed into the moral likeness of him to whom 
we pray. 

You covet the qualities of Jesus, you covet his 
patience, you covet his generosity, you covet his 
self-denial, you covet his devotion, you covet the 
fine temper of his mind and heart toward man — live 
as he did, pray as he did, send the multitudes away, 
send the cares away, go into the country, go away 
from your business, look at the sea, stand on its 
deep-sounding shores, count the stars, pray, pray! 
And unless you do these things you will remain to 
the end what you are this morning. 

Suffer me, my brethren, to exhort you to pray. 
Are you young, and just fastening on the armor for 
the strife of life? Then pray as Jesus prayed at 
his baptism, that the Holy Ghost may descend upon 
you! Are you in joy? Then steep and perfume 
your joys in prayer. Are you in adversity? Then 
pray to be delivered from the bitter spirit of envy 
and malignity and despair. Are you weary of the 
world? Then force yourself to be alone with God, 



jo Jesus at Prayer 

and the stars, and the sea, and the mountain, and 
duty and eternity, and you will come back to life 
equipped to wage successful war against every foe. 
Do you see the cross looming up darkly before 
you? Then pray that you may have fellowship 
with his sufferings through whose cross the world 
found life. Does the crowd applaud you? Then 
pray that no crown may ever be on your forehead 
but the Crown of Life. Does the crowd hiss and 
execrate you? Then pray that you may have fel- 
lowship with him who was alone save as the Father 
was with him. Are you on the mount of vision, 
breathing the heavenly air, your heart glowing with 
strange joy, the horizons disappearing one after 
another, until there are no horizons, and you feel the 
presence and power of eternity? Then pray that 
you may not be content to stay there, but that you 
may be quickened to come back to where men strug- 
gle, and help them. Has the evening come? It 
hastens for some of us. Has the evening come? 
Does the sinking sun begin to touch the waves of 
life's mysterious sea? Are you looking upon the 
well worn paths, and the familiar landscape, and 
the dear faces, for the last time? Do you feel the 
damp dew, the chill shadow, the solemn breath, of 
Night? Then pray that it may please God gra- 
ciously to fulfill in you the words of the prophet, 
At evening time it shall be light. 






OUTSIDE LOSSES, INSIDE GAINS 

"But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for 
Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for 
the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." — 
Phil. 3- 7, 8. 

The Bible, especially the New Testament, abounds 
in spiritual paradoxes. Among these may be men- 
tioned such forms of statement as these: "He that 
findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his 
life shall find it;" "Seeing ye shall not see, and 
hearing ye shall not hear, neither shall ye under- 
stand ;" "To him that hath shall be given, and from 
him that hath not shall be taken away even that 
which he hath;" "The first shall be last, and the 
last shall be first;" "Lay not up for yourselves 
treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth 
corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, 
but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where 
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where 
thieves do not break through nor steal." Life is to 
be considered from two sides, from the outside and 
the inside, from the external and the interior, from 
the visible and the invisible, from the physical and 
the spiritual. He who comes to the Bible, more 
particularly the later portion of it, in order to un- 



J2 Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

derstand it must get its eye, must see life as it does, 
must climb to its vantage ground, and breathe its 
bracing, tonic air. It is characteristic of the Word 
of God that it is always looking at life from the 
inside and not the outside, from the interior and 
not the exterior, from the invisible and not the visi- 
ble, from the eternal and not the temporal, from the 
spiritual and not the physical; and he, therefore, 
who would come to an adequate comprehension of 
the genius of the Word of God, and who would 
possess himself of the clues by which its spiritual 
paradoxes are to be rendered clear, potent, and pene- 
trating, must look at life through its eyes, and from 
its crystalline heights. The New Testament, in 
some things, is like an orange; it is better inside 
than it is outside. And he who undertakes to get 
at the New Testament as a greedy child eats an 
orange, by beginning with the rind, will not always 
find it pleasant to the taste. But he who has 
patience first to peel off the rind will find it succulent 
and edible, and grateful to the taste. 

The text contains an implied spiritual paradox, 
such as abound in this Book. The apostle here 
writes of losses that were gains, and of gains that 
were losses, and it is my purpose to speak to you 
this morning on gain and loss in life. You ought 
to prick up your ears at that ! You are interested in 
that, most of you ; you give six days out of seven to 
it. That is the problem in which you are all vitally 



Outside Losses, Inside Gains 73 

and constantly concerned from one week's end to 
another. Now, some things that I am going to say 
this morning will be largely unintelligible to worldly 
and unspiritual minds. I will be guilty at times of 
speaking in the language of spiritual paradox, and 
the unspiritual man will stumble at it. There is a 
great deal of talk in our day about the doctrine of 
evolution. The popular comprehension of the doc- 
trine of evolution is that it is an attempt to account 
for the origin of man by developing him from the 
animals, and it is asserted by those who oppose it 
that no case has been found in which man has been 
actually evolved from the animal, and we read much 
about "the missing link." I am not myself so much 
troubled about evolution in the past as I am about 
evolution now, because I see it going on all about 
me, and the uncompleted evolutions that I see before 
me are what perplex me. It is not an irrational 
statement to me, that man sprang from the animal 
in the past, when I see so many men in the world 
that have not yet gotten rid of the animal. Some 
men have gotten about as far as the serpent, and 
they have not evolved beyond that, and hence we 
speak of snaky men, serpentine men. There are 
some men who have reached about the point of the 
bear, and we meet bearish men, and they seem con- 
tent with their evolution. It is said that the buffa- 
loes of the Western prairies, when they stampede, 
pay no attention to any weak members of the herd 



74 Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

who may fall out by the way, but trample them, to 
death; and I am sure that a good many men have 
not been evolved far beyond the buffalo, because 
when I see them pushing and jostling each other, 
and a weak man falls out by the way, do they not 
often leave him there to die ? The doctrine of man's 
development from the animal in the past is not after 
all so absurd, because a great many men have not 
been evolved much beyond the animal to this day. 

The basis of what I mean to say is the spiritual 
philosophy of life. This spiritual philosophy of life 
has its axioms. The first is, GOD ; he is a Spirit, 
subtle, pervasive, diffusive, universal, eternal ; "Now 
unto him, the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, 
the only wise God, be glory forever and ever. 
Amen." The second is, that this God is to be sought 
of men, that he is especially a rewarder of them 
that diligently seek him; that they shall know who 
follow on to know; that wherever there is a heart 
that pants for him as the hunted hart for the cooling 
water-brook, there shall be found a discernment, 
a realization of the divine. Another axiom in the 
spiritual philosophy is man; that he, too, is a spirit, 
subtle, pervasive, flexible, diffusive, educatory. An- 
other axiom of this spiritual philosophy is, that all 
that we see, the whole round of human life, all 
its secular contrivances, and all its temporal con- 
cerns, yea, the old earth itself, are mere stages, tem- 
porary, and instrumental, to a higher end, namely, 



Outside Losses, Inside Gains 75 

the culture, the unfolding, the development of the 
spirit; that this spirit of man lays hold of the eter- 
nities all about it; that it was made for them; that 
it has its true and full life in them only ; that it not 
only hungers for God, but that it has positive capa- 
cities for God ; that the earth is simply a temporary 
training ground and schoolhouse for this spirit of 
man, and that whenever it shall have fulfilled its 
purpose as a spiritual gymnasium, it shall be shat- 
tered into ten times ten million atoms, or burnt 
with fire, or be used by its Maker for the develop- 
ment of other forms of life, or be appointed as the 
glorified abode of the perfected spirits here schooled. 
The spiritual philosophy includes the axiom that 
man hastens to a dateless, timeless, measureless life, 
with neither night nor day, with no temple, with no 
altars, with no priests, with no pain, with no sick- 
ness, with no imperfections, with no impediments 
of locality, with no physical life of flesh and blood, 
but with an organism that shall be known as a spir- 
itual body, as subtle, as plastic, as flexible as the 
enfranchised and empowered spirit within it. I can- 
not prove these things. I cannot prove to a clod 
the reality of spirit, and if there is a man here that 
is a clod, I cannot prove it to him. I cannot prove 
that a man is a spirit, where he is an animal. I 
cannot prove to a gross, obese, sensual man, a gour- 
mand, a voluptuary, an epicure — I cannot prove to 
such a man, who has stunted and dwarfed and 



j6 Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

starved and almost stifled his spirit, and given long 
supremacy to his flesh and his appetites — that he 
has a spirit. First of all, he must feel the pulse, the 
quickening thrill, of the spiritual life, before any 
arguments addressed to his mere understanding will 
prove to him tha-t he is a spirit. 

Having said this much I remark, first of all, that 
many of the apparent gains of life are real losses. 
Health is a gain in life, sometimes apparent, some- 
times real. A vigorous body, sound nerves, a good 
stomach, a clear head (I mean this kind of a head, 
though not this particular head to which I point; I 
mean the physical head, as distinguished from the 
other head, the head that thinks), these are all of 
great importance to a man, if he means to be really 
a man. 

Intellectual endowments of a high order and of 
great variety — in other words, what our mothers 
give us, as contrasted with what the schools give us 
— is an actual gift and may be a great and positive 
gain. Fortunate and easy conditions in life are so 
much gain, at least they are generally so regarded. 
I take it that we so regard them, because the bent 
of most of our striving is to provide such conditions 
for those whom we love best, for our own children. 
We must think that fortunate and easy conditions 
are a gain, or there would not be this constant 
thought, this self-denial, and anxiety, and care, and 
toil, to make ready such conditions for our children. 



Outside Losses, Inside Gains jj 

Prosperity and success, whether it be in the realm 
of business or of professional activity, whether it 
be the result of a single splendid stroke of genius, 
or of the slow accumulation, the patient efforts of 
long years — however it comes, whether we wake up 
famous, or come to see it as we go down to the 
grave, whether by one investment the millions are 
ours, or whether we slowly pile them up through 
the years — is it not gain? It depends. Health is 
not always gain. How is it about men of health, 
men of perfect, superb, royal health? Every rule 
has its exceptions, but is not the rule this, that the 
men who have this perfect health have not great 
intellectual powers? I go back now, in memory, 
to the men who have had perfect health, strong 
nerves, good blood, perfect circulation, and sound 
digestion, men without weakness or pain ; I go back 
to them, beginning in the town in which I grew up, 
noting them here and there, and if I were selecting 
candidates for a parliament of intellectual kings 
there are not half a dozen of them that I would 
propose for the suffrages of the people. Health is 
gain, but how often it degenerates into mere sensu- 
ousness or mere athleticism, and athleticism is not 
a gain, because an athletic life alone dwarfs the 
faculties and makes the forehead a narrow and re- 
treating one. He who has observed the conspicuous 
athletes knows that they are not distinguished by 
any decided intellectual cast of countenance. Gifts 



yS Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

— and this truth is so old, so apparent that it is now 
called trite — who does not know that it is a trite 
truth that a magnificent intellectual endowment is 
no sure augury of permanent intellectual power? 
Who does not know that as a rule the boys who 
seem to get their lessons quickly, who can repeat 
them glibly, and by their brilliant shallowness de- 
ceive the unpracticed and unwary teacher, are not 
the boys who become the great, steady, sturdy 
thinkers ? Easy and fortunate conditions are a bless- 
ing only when the character is inherently strong; 
but how many of those who are born to wealth and 
ample leisure are enervated thereby, never know the 
joy or the power of exertion, never know what it is 
to be inventive and skillful, and never learn the 
lesson of self-reliance. Prosperity, whether it be 
professional or commercial, is not always a gain. I 
remember that I thought so when I first looked out 
at life, but I have learned that the period of actual 
spiritual danger with most men, the philosophy of 
the spiritual life remaining true, is the period of 
great success. The period of great danger to the 
successful merchant is when the thousands are roll- 
ing in upon him. The period of danger to the phy- 
sician, and to the lawyer, and to the preacher, and to 
the tradesman and to the mechanic, of danger to all 
men, is when they begin to win their several prizes. 
Have you never seen prosperous and successful men 
who were rich and strong on the outside and poor 



Outside Losses, Inside Gains 79 

and thin and mean on the inside ? Have you never 
seen a man on 'Change whose slightest footfall made 
everybody tremble, the man who was easy, cool, in- 
different; came late and apparently never looked at 
the price board ; seemed slovenly about his dress, and 
looked as though he did not care, when it was all a 
quiet assumption of power ? Have you not despised 
him? Have you not felt and known at the time 
that while the man was thus strong on the outside 
he was a hard and pitiless man on the inside ? Now, 
he has paid something for everything he has. I 
ask you to-day what he is, and you say he is cold. 
Do you want a cold heart? You say he is cruel. 
Do you want to be cruel? You say he is pitiless. 
Do you want to be pitiless ? It is a great thing to 
walk through an exchange and domineer it, but 
that is a good round price to pay for it, to pay 
down cruelty in one large pile on the table, and then 
to pay down pitilessness in another pile, and then 
to pay down selfishness in another large pile, and 
then to pay down — I don't know what to call it ; he 
does not steal, but he pinches off the edges of hon- 
esty here and there ; he pinches off just as far as he 
can and the law not get hold of him. You know he 
has done so for a quarter of a century. He has not 
been arrested and put in prison, but you believe that 
he needs to be watched, and you are careful and 
alert when he proposes a transaction with you. He 
is rich on the outside, but as a man once said on 



80 Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

one of the great exchanges, an old, wise, unenvious 
man (we should never take the testimony of the en- 
vious), as he came down one of the stairways, "I 
have been here now for thirty years, and my ob- 
servation is, that pretty generally as the money 
comes in the soul shrivels up." Now, if there be a 
God, if he be a spirit, penetrating, universal, every- 
where present; if man may find and know him; if 
man be a spirit; if the old earth is nothing but a 
schoolhouse and, like all schoolhouses, temporary 
and instrumental ; if the earth be a mere scaffolding 
and, like all scaffolding, to be taken down when the 
temple is built ; if man as a spirit be hastening to a 
dateless, timeless, measureless life, many of our 
apparent gains are real losses. 

Many of our seeming losses are compatible with 
true gain, and some of our actual losses are neces- 
sary to real gain. What do I hear men say? "I 
lost two days last week by sickness;" "I lost a 
month last year by sickness ;" "I lost a year by 
sickness ;" "last year was a good year, I never lost 
a day by sickness." These are the current expres- 
sions. Is sickness always a loss? Some men have 
gained a great deal by sickness. Some men have 
found out by sickness that they had been married. 
Some men have found out by sickness that they had 
once paid court to a fair and beautiful woman. They 
had lost sight of that for years ; they took two meals 
with the woman they called their wife, and came 



Outside Losses, Inside Gains 8i 

into the house in the evening and remained there 
over night; but the great depth, tenderness, and 
wealth of that quiet, unmurmuring, long-suffering 
heart they never knew until they were sick for six 
months ; and then they gained a knowledge of what 
is in a woman's heart (and most men know nothing 
about it) that will last them all their lives. They 
found out that they were slowly killing the woman 
they had promised to love until death should part 
them. And it is well for a man to find out before it 
is too late, as many a man in this congregation needs 
to find out, that it is wrong to murder one's wife 
by indifference, by selfishness, by gradual estrange- 
ment, by the mad, feverish pursuit of wealth or 
ambition. 

And pain: is that a loss? Not always. It is a 
deep and unfathomable mystery. It is a wide and 
solemn mystery, touching all the shores of being, 
but sometimes it clarifies our vision and enriches 
our hearts. I want to say this day, to the praise of 
the glory of his grace, who is the manifested God, 
that the deepest insight, the clearest view I ever 
had of Jesus Christ — of the nearness and reality of 
the divine nature, the clearest spiritual revelation 
of the great truth of religion, that God is, that he 
is love, and that he serves the lowest, came to me 
when my brain was a quivering mass of pain ; when, 
pressing my hands to the aching temples, suddenly 
Peter's words came to me: "Forasmuch then as 



82 Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm your- 
selves likewise with the same mind." And I held 
my hands there in the darkened room, and said, 
"And did God suffer in the flesh? and did God know 
the thrill of physical pain ? Did God know what 
it was to have lacerated nerves? and is he my 
God? Then I am not alone in the whirling maze; 
I am not an orphan ; then the light of the Infinite is 
mine, and the vast spaces are not cold, barren, soul- 
less." That was a great pain. 

The losses of condition have their recompenses 
and gains. Last week I received word to the effect 
that a very dear friend had failed and made an 
assignment; in other words, that two hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars, that everybody thought he 
stood for a few months ago, had melted away. In 
speaking of it at the table, and trying to explain a 
failure to the wondering children, I said, "He lost 
everything." All that evening the phrase pursued 
me: "Lost everything." It was a careless speech. 
Has he lost everything? I said, and I began to look 
into it. He has not lost his wife; the Associated 
Press despatch that announced his failure did not 
announce that his wife was dead; and his children, 
they were not dead; and they were a great deal to 
him. Before my children should lack bread for 
their mouths, or raiment for their backs, I would 
carry a hod of mortar or take a hammer and break 
stone to ballast a railroad; and he is a better man 



Outside Losses, Inside Gains 83 

than I am, albeit he is a layman and I am a preacher, 
and what I would do for my children he would do 
for his children, and he has them yet. And his 
friends ; he has not lost his friends. He has lost his 
outside, spurious, pretended friends ; he has lost the 
friends who were tied to him because he was rich; 
because he lived in elegance in a great city, in a 
magnificent house, and was a controlling spirit in a 
great church. He has lost all the men who expected 
to reach the pastorate of that church through him. 
But he has not lost one genuine friend. I would 
cross the street through the mud twice as quick to 
find him now as when he was in wealth and power ; 
I have a warmer grasp of my hand for him the next 
time he comes here than when he was here the last 
time; and I am only one of many friends whom he 
has not lost, and will not soon lose. And God : he 
has not lost God. God is as near to his home to- 
day as he was on the Sunday I was there and 
enjoyed its generous hospitality. Yes, God is 
nearer, because his child is in trouble and needs him 
more. The nearness of God is measured by the 
greatness of our need. He has not lost his integrity, 
his fine sense of honor. I know him well enough 
to know that not only will his house go, but that 
his gold watch, his books, his pictures, everything 
he has will be surrendered before he will deal fraud- 
ulently with his creditors. And so, after all, he has 
not lost much, for he has his wife and his children, 



84 Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

and his friends, and his unsullied integrity, and the 
Friend that sticketh closer than a brother, and his 
own spirit, and the coming eternities, and the ever- 
lasting growth. He is still rich. 

In a small city in this country there is a woman 
who lives a strange life, according to the ordinary 
standard of life among women of her tastes and 
training. You will find her almost every afternoon 
in the tenement houses, especially where there are 
any sick, and no less where the diseases are infec- 
tious and contagious. You will find her in the 
schools where the children are rude and coarse and 
ignorant; you will find her where the people are 
shiftless, slovenly, repellant. Five, eight years ago 
it was not so. She lived in one of the finest houses 
in the town. Her husband was the financial secre- 
tary of one of the largest manufacturing enterprises 
of the place. His hair is cropped close now, and 
he wears a striped suit of clothes in a state peni- 
tentiary. Then, she was a gay, vain, frivolous 
woman; to her inferiors, cold, haughty, proud; but 
her head has bowed. She has lost a great deal on 
the outside ; lost this princely home — the men from 
whom her husband had embezzled the money took 
that; it belonged to them; the poor mill hands, 
whose savings he stole, took everything he had ; it 
fairly and equitably belonged to them. She has lost 
wealth not only, but her former influence and posi- 
tion; she has lost the good name in which she 



Outside Losses, Inside Gains 85 

boasted, for it is not good to be known by the name 
of a convict and a penitentiary bird. She has lost 
more on the outside than I can tell you. But she 
is rich inside. Now, I am not here to preach to 
you that God conspired with this man to steal this 
money in order to secure this spiritual training and 
elevation for this woman. The lines of my philoso- 
phy on these deep questions run out a little way 
and then break down. There are many questions 
that I cannot answer. I cannot tell anything about 
the final reasons or causes of that man's sin. I know 
God did not conspire with him to cheat these mill 
people in order to secure the spiritual development 
of his wife. But I know that when the overmaster- 
ing moment of humiliation came ; when the officers 
of the law came and took her husband away to the 
state penitentiary, she rose up a new and spiritual 
woman, filled with the very Spirit of Christ. I know 
this; that as when, after a long season of drought, 
the drenching rain beats to the ground the parched 
and unf ragrant flowers, so there came to her a storm 
that bent her down to the ground ; and I know, too, 
that as when, after the rain is past, the cleansed 
flowers lift themselves again into the glad air, and 
send their fragrance forth, and the air is redolent 
with perfume, so she has been raised up to the 
realm of the divine and the spiritual, her name is 
as ointment poured forth, and many rise up to call 
her blessed. Outside losses, inside gains! 



86 Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

Once I stood, on the thirty-first day of December, 
some years ago, in the gallery of the New York 
Stock Exchange. The brokers, the bulls and the 
bears, or whatever they call them, the men that make 
themselves hoarse, were having a grand gala day 
as they closed up the business of the year. A man 
by my side was attentive and thoughtful, and he 
said to me, "They have had a good year of it, I 
suppose, among themselves, but it was a bad year 
for me. They have got fifteen thousand dollars of 
my money down there among them." And I sup- 
pose he thought that I was sorry, but I was not. 
He may, perhaps, have thought that I was praying. 
If I prayed at all, this was my prayer: "O, Lord, 
if it please thee, take fifteen thousand more from this 
man. He is already under conviction ; let them take 
a little more from him, and he will be what I once 
knew him to be, an upright, noble, open-hearted, 
sober, reverent, spiritual man." Outside losses, 
inside gains ! 

Daniel Drew was never as great to me when he 
was reputed to be worth three or four millions, and 
founded a theological seminary for the Methodist 
Episcopal Church and made Wall Street tremble, 
as when, stripped of all his property, the old man 
turned toward God in penitence and trust. I would 
then have doffed my hat to him any time. As it is 
with the losses of life so, often, is it with the losses 
of death. A man cloisters himself and family from 



Outside Losses, Inside Gains 87 

the troubles and miseries of the great world, and has 
his own plan for family government, and thinks he 
will rear an ideal family according to an ideal plan. 
After a while a messenger comes to his home for 
whom he never sent. The death of little children 
means one thing to those who are not parents and 
it means another thing to those who are parents. 
The first two years I was in the ministry, when I 
went to the funerals of little children, and took the 
book out of my pocket to read the burial service, I 
would listen to the sobs and cries of the poor, igno- 
rant Welsh women over their dead boys and girls 
with wonder and surprise. I did not think they 
were fools exactly, but I thought they were not wise 
or philosophic. God forgive me for the indifferent 
feeling I had toward them when they rained their 
tears on the faces of their dead babes in the pine 
coffins in that mining town ! I thought they ought 
to be glad that the little boys and the little girls 
were out of such a world as this. After a while 
there came a little girl to our house, and when she 
was six months old I had to read that same service 
by the side of the coffin of a little girl six months 
old, and as I thought of my own little girl, and what 
her death would mean to me, I read it with a new 
and deeper meaning. Into this man's house came 
the unbidden messenger, and his icy breath was on 
the face of his little girl. He did not pray, he did 
not weep, but he stood dazed, stupefied, amazed, 



88 Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

until the child was dead, and he went out into the 
world mad, fierce, defiant. Years went by, and after 
a while he said : "Where is she ?" and that moment 
his face, that had been toward the ground, was 
raised a little. In another year he said : "What is 
she?" and he began to look at the stars. And after 
another year he said: "And what is she to me?" 
He joined no church and professed no creed, but 
slowly, insensibly, wondering where she was, won- 
dering what she was, he was being spiritualized. 
Time went on, and his hair grew gray, and as he 
still pondered the mystery of life, and love, and 
death, he was kinder in the tones of his voice, he 
was kinder to the boys in the office, kinder to his 
customers, kinder to all men, and one day he sur- 
prised his wife by saying : "I am going over there 
to teach in that mission school where those miscre- 
ant boys are. I don't believe in religion, you know. 
You have heard me talk for twenty years ; but I be- 
lieve in boys being brave, and truthful, and mag- 
nanimous, and I am going over there to tell them 
some good stories." And he went over there where 
the boys were gathered from the slums, and when 
they began on him — they were rats — he said : "Boys, 
you must decide this matter; you must stop, or I'll 
take my hat and go." And they stopped and looked 
at him, and they saw the light of love in his deep, 
clear blue eyes, and they listened to his story. 
Slowly he won them to goodness and truth. He 



Outside Losses, Inside Gains 89 

went on thus for some time, and one day a man 
came to him and said: "Everything you have is 
gone!" And he said: "Let it go; you will find the 
deed for my house yonder in the drawer; there is 
not much here, anyhow." It was to him as though 
her spirit hand, reached down from the deep blue 
heavens, beckoned him to be away, and he whis- 
pered : "She has found me, and God has found me, 
and I have found myself, and I am going to the 
eternal life." He lost on the outside; he gained on 
the inside. 

One word and I am done. I suppose the average 
business man — the average successful business man 
— regards his preacher as a mere novice in book- 
keeping; and yet I say here this morning that the 
system of bookkeeping pursued in this country and 
England is the most incomplete system that could 
well be devised. The system of single and double 
entry bookkeeping used in business offices is not 
adequate to the business of life. You have no ac- 
count in your books that is opened in this way: 
"Outside gains, inside losses." You have never yet 
opened up that account. And there is another ac- 
count : "Outside losses, inside gains." You have 
not the courage to take off a balance sheet from that 
kind of book. Where is the man who will do it? 
Where is the man who will open such a system of 
bookkeeping as that, and take off a quarterly balance 
sheet ? Where is the man who knows how to charge 



90 Outside Losses, Inside Gains 

up on that system of bookkeeping, to the account 
of profit and loss, the real gains and the apparent 
losses, and the real losses and the apparent gains? 
Will you learn the new system of bookkeeping? 
All these outside things are going from you. All 
these outside things are slipping away. You are 
casting them as a serpent sloughs his skin, as a bird 
moults her feathers. All these outside things are 
going — the flesh life is giving way. For you the 
scaffolding will soon be taken down and laid in the 
grave. Nothing is sure but the heavens and what 
they contain, God and the eternal life, spirit and its 
destiny. Begin to keep your books right. Begin 
to learn so to lose as evermore to gain. 

Hear, therefore, the words of the Lord : "Then 
said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come 
after me, let him deny himself, and take up his 
cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his 
life shall lose it : and whosoever will lose his life for 
my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, 
if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own 
soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for his 
soul?" 



GOD SEEKING MAN 

"I have sent also unto you all my servants the prophets, 
rising up early and sending them, saying, Return ye now 
every man from his evil way, and amend your doings, and 
go not after other gods to serve them, and ye shall dwell in 
the land which I have given to you and to your fathers : but 
ye have not inclined your ear, nor hearkened unto me." — 
Jer. 35- IS- 

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved 
us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." — 
i John 4. 10. 

The history of religion may be studied from two 
sides, or from two points of view — the human side 
and the divine side; from the standpoint of the 
natural and the standpoint of the supernatural. 
From the human side religion may be denned as the 
effort of man to find God. "O, that I knew where 
to find him, that I might come even to his seat! 
I would fill my mouth with arguments, and order 
my cause before him!" This has been the cry of 
confused, perplexed, guilty, suffering, aspiring men, 
in all ages and in all lands. In his search after God 
man has ever been pursued and haunted by the 
thought that he dare not venture alone, unshielded, 
and unhelped, into the Eternal Presence; that he 
might safely present himself before God only 
through the interposition of some priest, or sacred 



92 God Seeking Man 

ceremony, or visible church, or external rite. Feel- 
ing his weakness, confessing his ignorance, op- 
pressed with a sense of his infirmity, burdened with 
guilt and uncleanness, he has seldom dared to believe 
that God was better pleased with a broken and con- 
trite heart than with burnt sacrifices, costly gems, or 
ascetic austerities. Man has indeed, be it said to his 
honor and glory, never entirely ceased to believe 
that God was his Father, that he was made for God, 
and the effort on his part has been a long, painful, 
and laborious one to carry his frail manhood up to 
conscious union with the Divinity. 

Most religions have been organized, and have 
taken their distinctive quality by constantly assum- 
ing that man is to seek God. The Christian religion 
has suffered beyond calculation by false teaching in 
this regard. I was brought up to believe that in my 
natural and unregenerate state God was removed 
from me an immeasurable distance, that he regarded 
me with extreme displeasure and repugnance, and 
that he would come near to me only after I had 
passed through certain experiences of conviction, 
contrition, self-abasement, repentance, trust, and 
conversion. This was not taught me in any formal 
or deliberate way, but these words truly describe the 
total effect upon me of the religious influences that 
played in upon my life and spirit when I was a boy. 
I was estranged from God; God was widely alien- 
ated from me ; the agent of separation and alienation 



God Seeking Man 93 

was sin. While I continued in sin God would not, 
and could not come to me, and I could hope for his 
presence and help only after I had set myself to be 
delivered from its guilt and power. 

Such a view of the relation of God to weak, im- 
perfect, developing, willful men I now know to be 
erroneous, certainly partial and misleading, contain- 
ing a sufficient amount of truth to make the error 
always pernicious and hurtful, and sometimes dead- 
ly. As I grew older it pleased God to cause the 
truth gradually to dawn upon me that he was seek- 
ing me much more than I was seeking him. I am 
now joyously confirmed and established in this con- 
viction, it is the health and strength and light of my 
spirit, and to my mind there is no other reasonable 
or defensible statement of the relation and dis- 
position of God to the moral beings dwelling upon 
this globe. When one considers what human life 
actually is in the world, the conditions under which 
men are born and live, the great forces that play 
upon them, the nature of the influences that mold 
them and give them knowledge and direction from 
their earliest years ; when one considers how slowly 
men come to a knowledge of themselves, and espe- 
cially to a moral knowledge of themselves, how 
tardily they come to the use and mastery of their 
spiritual powers and being, he is constrained to be- 
lieve that, the Author of creation being considerate, 
just, merciful, and benevolent, he must be seeking, 



94 God Seeking Man 

by all means and forces, the rescue of his children. 
The contents of all deep religious experience point 
in the same direction the more closely and ingenu- 
ously they are studied; and it is the joy of the 
religious heart to say, "I love him, because he first 
loved me." 

This certainly is the teaching of the Holy Scrip- 
tures. The general truth they contain is, not that 
man by searching found out God, or by any self- 
imposed moral disciplines could fit himself for high 
and perfect communion with God, but that God, 
impelled by his holy love, must from the very be- 
ginning have been seeking the spiritual unfolding of 
his children. This is the true impression to make 
on the mind of a child — that it is forever pursued by 
God's love. I am sure that a reasonable religion 
(and only a reasonable religion is possible to reason- 
able beings) imposes upon us the duty of instructing 
men that God is seeking them more than they are 
seeking God. 

The interpreting experiences of the years have 
strengthened this view, especially when the light of 
interpretation is that which breaks forth from the 
Holy Word. This is the only satisfactory view to 
be obtained by a plain person from an open study of 
the Word of God; and by an open study of the 
Word of God I mean the diligent and devout read- 
ing of the Bible from beginning to end, without note 
or comment, just as we have it in the established 



God Seeking Man 95 

English version. The truth I seek to disclose and 
emphasize to-night is this : That the Christian re- 
ligion teaches that God is engaged in a search after 
man much more than man is engaged in a search 
after God. To begin with the beginning, let us 
consider that account of our entanglement in evil, 
commonly styled "the fall," which, I take it, is a 
parable, an inspired parable, a parable after the 
fashion of the parable of the prodigal son — full of 
truth, just as that is — but a parable nevertheless. 
In that parable which recounts how we became en- 
snared with evil, after the evil had been consented 
unto and become actual transgression, what does 
Adam do — seek God ? Nay, he hides from him, and 
God seeks Adam. The first cry is not on the part 
of Adam groping after a lost and alienated God, but 
the mercifulness of God is manifested in the coming 
into the garden of the Lord to find Adam. That is 
the first act in the history of divine love, in its long- 
battle with sin on this globe. Pass over the interven- 
ing years, and come to the account of the time of 
Noah : did the people of that time seek God ? Or, 
did not God seek them through Noah? did he not 
make him a preacher of righteousness unto them for 
many years, and was it not the constant divine 
effort to save them from the coming peril? And 
when the final catastrophe came, God saved the race 
in Noah. Well, now, Noah was not a singularly 
perfect example of an ideal type of spiritual man- 



96 God Seeking Man 

hood. Noah was relatively a good man, just as men 
are good when you measure them by their light, 
their opportunities, their times. He was a good 
Bible man : the Bible is the best book in the world to 
study men ; it always tells the truth about men ; it is 
the only book I have in my library that does; it is 
the only book that has the courage to speak out 
the full truth on all subjects at all times; it is not 
afraid to tell us what kind of men Adam and Noah 
were, and it represents God as seeking the people 
through Noah, and not the people seeking God 
through Noah. We come down to later times, to 
that remarkable figure that stands at the head of 
the Jewish history. When we speak of Abraham, 
what do we say? We speak of "the call" of Abra- 
ham, and we mean God called Abraham, not that 
Abraham called God. Abraham, wandering in 
Chaldea and Mesopotamia, in the land of ancient, 
gorgeous, seductive idolatries, did not seek and find 
God, God sought and found him. That is the un- 
doubted historic truth; either that is true or the 
Bible is false, either there was a revelation to Abra- 
ham, and a call of Abraham by the Divine Being, 
or there is no necessity for a supernatural revela- 
tion, for, if a man, circumstanced as was Abraham, 
could find God, could satisfy himself of the truth of 
one God, and of the falsity of idolatry, so could a 
hundred men. In Abraham, as in Adam and Noah, 
we find God seeking man, not man seeking God. 



God Seeking Man 97 

Consider the case of Moses — who sought him? 
God did. When he fled from his duty the first time, 
and was keeping sheep in the region of the moun- 
tains of the Sinaitic peninsula, whose voice did he 
hear? The voice of God calling unto him from out 
of the midst of the burning bush, saying, "Moses, 
Moses." . . . We come down to the era of the 
Hebrew prophets, to Samuel, the founder of the 
prophetic order, and when he was a lad of twelve 
years of age in the temple God spoke to him; God 
found him, he did not find God; God sought him, 
and through him the nation. When we come down 
to the time of Isaiah the lesson is the same. He is 
in the temple, a young man thirty years of age, 
when suddenly the hidden glory shines before his 
eyes. What is the teaching of that wonderful 
vision ? It is this : that after the lips of Isaiah had 
been cleansed, and there was silence in the temple, 
the first voice heard is the voice of the Lord, saying : 
"Whom shall I send? Who shall go for us?" 
What is that? God seeking man through the me- 
diation of a holy prophet, a prophet made holy by 
God himself. And then in the passage I read to 
you from Jeremiah, it is sharpened, epitomized, and 
intensified : "I have sent also unto you all my serv- 
ants the prophets, rising up early and sending them, 
saying : Return ye now every man from his evil way, 
and amend your doings, and go not after other 
gods to serve them, and ye shall dwell in the land 



gS God Seeking Man 

which I have given to you and your fathers : but ye 
have not inclined your ear, nor hearkened unto me." 

We approach the great central fact of the Chris- 
tian religion, the fact of the incarnation; and what 
do we find — man ascending to God, or God de- 
scending to man? The deep and solemn truth of 
the incarnation is that after prophets had been sent, 
and holy men had been sent, the Divinity himself, 
veiled in the flesh, voluntarily submitted to the con- 
ditions of the earth and time-life, and all this for 
moral purposes. It is God seeking men. He in 
whom this incarnation was effected, disclosed and 
taught this same truth : "I am come to seek and to 
save the lost; I am come to find the guilty, to heal 
the sick, to save the wretched." 

Now, is it not a very remarkable thing, when you 
come to reflect upon it, that instead of establishing 
a great school, or a great society, or a great building 
in Jerusalem and surrounding himself with the best 
men of the nation, receiving people in formal and 
regular order as they were presented to him, he 
seldom visited Jerusalem at all, that he went out 
after men, men of all sorts, that he invited and se- 
cured the love of the worst men, that the lowest and 
vilest were at home in his presence? And yet, that 
is the story of the incarnation. Nor has he long 
ascended into heaven until he calls Paul, and his 
first mission was his last mission: "I will send you 
far forth unto the Gentiles." Christianity breaks 



God Seeking Man 99 

the bounds of Judaism, and what does that mean? 
God spreads everywhere the glad tidings. Again it 
is God seeking men, and not men seeking God. 

Thus have I opened to you, with necessary brev- 
ity, the true doctrine of the Word of God. They 
who teach us that because of the sin of a remote 
ancestor, whose guilt, passing over from generation 
to generation, comes now upon our heads, we are cut 
off from the love of the Father who made us ; that 
because of the sin of a man who lived thousands of 
years ago, and with whom we have no kind of re- 
sponsible moral connection, the everlasting Father 
is removed from us at an immeasurable distance, 
and that he will not come near us until we have 
turned ourselves about and have made ourselves fit 
and worthy to be received by him, such teachers, I 
say, do violence not only to separate passages of the 
Word of God, but to its whole blessed spirit from 
Genesis to Revelation, for if the Bible does not 
teach that God is perpetually seeking man, that the 
divine love antedates human love, I do not know 
what it was intended to teach. This is its undis- 
guised, unmistakable message from God to man, 
"I have loved thee with an everlasting love." 

There are some lessons growing out of this con- 
densed statement of scriptural truth worthy of our 
serious thought and worthy to be carried with us 
from this place to the battle ground. The first is 
that sin, the separating element between God and 



Lrf& 



ioo God Seeking Man 

man, is at once an alien intrusion and a grave peril. 
There is a philosophy growing up in these latter 
days teaching that sin, or moral evil, is not very 
clearly distinguishable from imperfection, from 
ignorance, from infirmity; that the problem being 
given how to evolve from animal conditions to 
spiritual conditions such a race as this, what we call 
sin is a necessary transitional phase of that expe- 
rience. If this teaching be true, if this be a part of 
the final philosophy of the universe and of man, then 
sin is a blessing and we should honestly say so; if 
man cannot reach his ultimate destiny save by pass- 
ing through the experience of sin, if sin be a neces- 
sary part, a divinely appointed element in his 
spiritual development, and not a foreign and alien 
element — then I see no further use for battling with 
evil, either in our own hearts or in the world. But 
I know sin to be an intrusion, because God himself is 
seeking man to save him from it. If the experience 
of sin is a mere temporary phase of human develop- 
ment, God would allow things to work themselves 
out : such a philosophy cannot keep its place for an 
hour in company with any genuine belief of the 
divine origin or spirit of the Christian religion. 
The two are mutually exclusive. The whole matter 
reduces itself to this statement: the Christian re- 
ligion is false or this philosophy is false, for the 
Christian religion represents God as seeking man 
always and everywhere to save him from sin. So, 



God Seeking Man ioi 

then, sin is an intrusion. If you ask me to explain 
the precise method of the intrusion, I am dumb; if 
you ask me to go into the ultimate questions of the 
why and the wherefore, my mouth is closed. I see 
only a little way ; I am beginning to see far enough 
to be more reverent than I used to be; I see far 
enough to know that sin is an actual and deadly 
enemy, and that it is not a part of God's eternal plan 
and work. The solution of the problem of its ex- 
istence, its reconciliation with the divine power and 
goodness — what shall I say to these questions? 
"My soul, hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise 
him, who is the health of my countenance and my 
God." 

Not only does this search after man demonstrate 
that sin is an intrusion, but that it is a peril. Either 
there is peril in human life, great peril, vast peril, 
immeasurable peril, or God would not take the 
pains he has taken, and is taking, to save men. 
There must be some danger in living, or God would 
not be so intensely solicitous that men should live 
right. When I go down to examine a steamer and 
they show me the water-tight compartments, and 
explain their purpose, when they show me this and 
the other parts of the steamer, and tell me how 
strong they are, that they may be able to resist the 
violence of the storm, when they show me the life 
boats and explain that they are equal in capacity to 
the number of passengers, when they point out the 



102 God Seeking Man 

life-preservers and explain that there are more than 
enough for all on board — I conclude that there is 
some peril in crossing the Atlantic Ocean. And 
when I see all that God has done, when I study the 
history of the race and of human life, and when I 
look out on the world as I see it about me, I con- 
clude that the man who imagines that it is a matter 
of indifference how he lives here is either insane or 
is so silly as to be unable to think. There is peril in 
human life. No peril! How then do you explain 
the sad wrecks of human life ? O ! man, open your 
eyes, and look about you! There is peril, close 
peril, constant peril, fearful peril, vast peril, im- 
measurable peril ! 

It is the high and peculiar glory of the Christian 
revelation that it reveals God as seeking man, and 
as seeking him for the highest spiritual and redemp- 
tive ends. In all this search of God after man it is 
remarkable that the truth finds no place, no clear, 
distinct, recognized place, in any system of religion 
known to us, except the Christian religion. It has 
been stated recently, on high authority, that one of 
the distinctive marks of the Christian religion is 
that it represents the Divine Being as seeking man 
to save him, while all other religions represent man 
alone, distressed, guilty, trying in the night to find 
God. There is no other religion known to us that 
tells us that the great heart of God perpetually 
yearns after us; there is no other religion that re- 



God Seeking Man 103 

veals to us the blessed truth that for weak and guilty 
men there is a divine yearning, and tenderness, and 
compassion, that our God is a Shepherd, seeking 
his lost sheep on the mountain. That is the peculiar 
glory of the Christian religion. 

In this revelation it is nowhere intimated (and 
this is another indication of what I may call the in- 
tellectual and philosophical sanity of the Bible), 
there is no suggestion or hint that God in his search 
after man ever sought him save for spiritual pur- 
poses. You look at the products of our civilization, 
go into any of our great cities, and what have we 
here that God sought us in order to give to us ? The 
elements of the science of political economy were 
not revealed to men — men found them out for them- 
selves. There never was any book dropped down 
from heaven containing the proper method of civic 
life. Where is the work on hygiene that God gave 
to man ? We had to find that all out for ourselves. 
God never gave us a work on the vegetable kingdom. 
Where is the picture that God painted for us? 
These houses we build — we had to learn to build 
them ourselves. How did we find out the economic 
uses of lightning? Did God tell us that? We 
searched it out for ourselves. There was no revela- 
tion to us of the science of botany; there were the 
flowers, and we studied them to ascertain their laws. 
None of these things did God bring to us in his 
search to save us. God was seeking us in order to 



104 God Seeking Man 

redeem us from falseness, impurity, selfishness, 
animalism ; and knowing that his sons and daughters 
were strong enough to do the rest for themselves, 
he left us to do it. 

We see now the true purposes of the offices and 
institutions of religion in the world. Religion is the 
union of man with God ; the binding of man's spirit 
to God. The offices and institutions of religion are 
visible churches, symbolic ceremonies, the setting 
apart of certain days for the performance of certain 
religious duties, the administration of the sacrament, 
the public instruction of the people in matters that 
pertain to spiritual life, prayer, song, music — all 
these are of the nature of the offices and institutions 
of religion. But now, what are they for? They 
are to seek men. That is what God does. And 
whenever a church, whenever a pulpit, whenever 
men and women who have organized themselves to- 
gether for the purposes of religion forget that their 
chief business is to seek men, they are wronging and 
grieving the Spirit of God. Suffer me, my brethren, 
to fasten this truth upon your hearts. How many 
of you are seeking men? How many of you are 
seeking men for religious purposes ? How many of 
you within a year have sought any man with entire 
reference to influencing him religiously? How 
many of you are doing it now ? How many of our 
churches are content, either to give this whole work 
to the preacher, and thus make it official and pro- 



God Seeking Man 105 

fessional on his part, or else to leave it undone? 
How few churches in these large cities to-day are 
directly and earnestly engaged in seeking men as 
God seeks men ! A large majority of them are 
supinely and selfishly waiting for men to seek the 
church. This is a precise reversal of God's method, 
and the church that is not engaged in seeking men 
is out of sympathy with the heart of the eternal God 
in his ceaseless work for the rescue of his children. 
We find God very naturally and simply; we find 
God by amending our ways and doing those things 
which are well-pleasing in his sight. "How shall I 
find God?" does some man ask? "What is neces- 
sary for me to believe concerning baptism? There 
is a difference of opinion concerning baptism ; what 
shall I believe in order to find God ? There are many 
churches in the community; which one shall I join 
in order to find God? There are many doctrines 
in the different churches; how many of these, and 
what particular doctrines, must I believe in order 
to find God? There are many opinions concerning 
inspiration and the authority of the Bible; what 
must I believe in order to find God ?" My brother, 
you can find God by simply amending your life and 
doing those things that are pleasing to him. You 
can find him to-night that way. I am talking to men 
whom he has sought for many years ! He began to 
seek them in their childhood when strange voices 
from afar came to them, and alas! now they think 



106 God Seeking Man 

those were foolish voices ! He sought you through 
the devotion, the piety, the self-sacrifice, the noble 
virtues, and the sweet graces of your father and 
mother, and they are now waiting for you in the 
invisible life. He has sought you since by the smile 
and love and trust of your child. He has sought 
you in life's stormier and more tragic experiences 
when you felt yourself alone. He has sought you 
in the services of the church, in the glow of its 
worship, in the rush of its song, in the uplift and 
outlook of its spiritual communion. He has sought 
you as you meditated at even-tide, or wandered by 
the sea. He seeks you now. He has sought you all 
your life, and in ways without number. He calls 
again. O, hear him ! O, heed him ! O, find him ! 
O, open your hearts to his holy, cleansing, peace- 
giving love! 



THE GOD OF COMFORT 

"The God of all comfort." — 2 Cor. 1. 3. 

It is clear that to the apostle Paul God was nei- 
ther a perhaps nor a mental abstraction. If I should 
say that Paul was a theist, that he believed in one 
God, the Creator of all things, and the Supreme 
Ruler of men, you would at once feel that this 
language was mild and inadequate, that it was too 
cold, formal, philosophical, to express the deep in- 
timacy, the glorious commerce of Paul's spirit with 
the invisible Father and Lover of men. Paul did 
not so much believe certain things about God as he 
saw God, and lived in the glad and open knowledge 
of him. He did not so much comprehend God as 
he apprehended him, first being apprehended of 
him. The God of the apostle Paul's love and de- 
votion was not vague, or shadowy, or unreal, or dis- 
tant, or metaphysical, or philosophical, but a God 
nigh at hand, open, approachable, helpful, compan- 
ionable, a near and dear and intimate friend, and all 
this, as you must have observed by reading his let- 
ters in the New Testament, without any letting 
down, weakening, or degradation of the idea of 
God. How inviting, how gracious, and how pre- 
cious is the idea and thought of God in the magnifi- 



108 The God of Comfort 

cent and swelling doxology of the context: "Paul, 
an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and 
Timothy our brother, unto the church of God which 
is at Corinth, with all the saints which are in all 
Achaia : Grace be to you and peace from God our 
Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be 
God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the 
Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort ; who 
comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be 
able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by 
the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted 
of God." How shall one fitly describe this winsome 
and attractive unfolding of the divine nature! 
Here we are in the presence of something more than 
a skillful Manipulator of plastic matter; we are in 
the presence of something more than the decorative 
Artist of the vast azure dome above us; we are in 
the presence of something more than the Framer of 
the worlds; we are in the presence of something 
more than the Mechanical Engineer of the uni- 
verse; we are in the presence of something more 
than the relentless Punisher of disobedient men; 
we are in the presence of something more than the 
stern Vindicator of abstract moral order; we are in 
the presence of a Heart, an oceanlike Heart, that 
sends out the tides of its love everywhither, a Heart 
that feels, a Heart that throbs with love, a patient 
Heart, a rescuing Heart, a cleansing Heart, a sooth- 
ing, solacing Heart. As a fountain of water in a 



The God of Comfort 109 

waste and arid desert to the traveler whose lips are 
burning with thirst, so are these words to countless 
thousands of fainting and famishing souls. They 
are like the gentle caress of the divine mother in the 
holy hush of the summer's eventide, when her child 
is weary, impatient, and fretful. They are like 
peace after strife, they are like rest after weariness, 
they are like love and hope after trouble and doubt. 
Have you ever, after a day of harassing care and 
wearing toil, your hands and feet chill, limp, life- 
less, your brain quick, hot, feverish, your sleep un- 
easy, fitful, restless, disturbed by frightful dreams — 
have you ever, at such a time, at midnight, floating 
on the sweet air, heard now and then, as if from 
afar, soft strains of delicious music, and you were 
soothed and tranquilized, and fell off into a deep, 
untroubled sleep ? O, to how many lonely, anguish- 
smitten, troubled, careworn, restless souls have these 
words come as though they were a part of the song 
that angels sing in heaven ! "Blessed be God, even 
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of 
mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comfort- 
eth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able 
to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the 
comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of 
God." 

Comfort has for its presupposition imperfection, 
weakness, infirmity, pain, distress, suffering. If 
these words are fictions of the imagination, if there 



no The God of Comfort 

be no mental conditions or states or experiences 
corresponding to them, if it be not true that there 
are such conditions as misery, need, helplessness, 
loneliness — then the word "comfort" ought not to 
be in our language, and the idea denoted by the 
word should lapse from our thought. Comfort, to 
define it more closely, is the solace, the relief, the 
refreshment, the encouragement, brought to those 
who are in any trouble, or weakness, or pain, or 
yearning, or need. This disposition resides in God. 
The impulse and the power to solace the distressed, 
to strengthen the weak, to give light to the dark- 
ened, to give help to the needy, to comfort the 
troubled, is of the eternal disposition of God. It is 
a necessary and abiding element of his nature. Nor 
is its disclosure confined to the New Testament. 
What says the royal Psalmist: "Though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will 
fear no evil ; for thou art with me ; thy rod and thy 
staff they comfort me." What is the word of the 
Lord to the evangelical prophet ? "Comfort ye, com- 
fort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye com- 
fortably unto Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her 
warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is par- 
doned." What saith the same prophet in another 
place? "As one whom his mother comforteth, so 
will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in 
Jerusalem." And when the disciples, shrinking, 
disconsolate, fearful, gathered on that terrible night 



The God of Comfort hi 

about the Lord, and he would put in one word all 
that he intended to give them as an atonement for 
his absence, he said, "I will pray the Father, and he 
shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide 
with you forever." And again, "I will not leave you 
comfortless ; I will come to you." 

"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." God 
is busy, but he is not busy as a great many men 
imagine him to be. I suppose he is busy making 
new worlds and systems and suns and universes. 
I suppose he is perpetually bringing into being new 
forms of life, but it is as easy for our God to do 
these things as for a gifted boy with a sharp knife 
and a deft hand to make a windmill. I suppose that 
God is busy ; but he is not busy as the superintendent 
of a factory is, running hither and thither to look 
after every detail; he is not busy as an engineer 
is, piling in fuel and oiling the wheels all the time 
so that the machine can go. When God makes 
worlds he does not need to be mending them every 
few days ; they go themselves, and always will until 
they reach their final destiny as appointed in his 
mighty thought. Nor is he busy, as many have 
seemed to imagine, playing the spy on men, slyly 
watching them, eager to detect them in weakness 
and willfulness, so that he may pounce upon them 
in swift and remediless vengeance. Yes, God is 
busy, but he is busy sending his angels everywhither 
to carry good tidings to the weak ; he is busy heal- 



ii2 The God of Comfort 

ing the broken-hearted; he is busy comforting all 
that mourn; he is busy opening the prison doors 
to them that are bound ; he is busy striking off the 
chains of those who are slaves ; he is busy in giving 
the oil of joy for mourning, beauty for ashes, and 
the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. 
What would you think of a mother who> was so busy 
with the economic arrangements of her household, 
so busy in the kitchen, so busy in the dining room, 
so busy with the scrubbing, and cooking, and wash- 
ing, and ironing, so busy with her various social 
duties, that she had no time left for her children, 
and entirely yielded them to the care of a nurse? 
Well, now, am I to fashion my idea of God from 
such a mother ? Am I to believe that God is one who 
has handed us over to nurses, while he is busy with 
laws, and forces, and globes, and suns, having no 
time directly to communicate with his children? 
God is one who gives to his children somewhat of 
his own being and life, which is precisely what every 
true mother gives to her child. So God mothers 
men and women — puts into them his life to bring 
them to the full stature and growth of the divine 
life. 

The God of comfort is peculiarly and distinctly 
the scriptural and Christian God. There is no clear, 
distinct sign anywhere else that there is such a God. 
So far as conscience is a revealer of the secrets of 
the Divinity, it affords not the faintest glimmer of 



The God of Comfort 113 

a prophecy that the moral Ruler of men is a God 
of comfort. You take the conscience and analyze 
it, and make your analysis searching and exhaust- 
ive, and what does the process reveal to you? In 
brief, this, that man possesses a sense or faculty 
that enables him to discern what we call the moral 
quality of actions; that this sense or faculty so 
reveals to man the moral quality of actions as to 
bind him to the same in some close, mysterious 
way; that when we recognize the obligation and 
perform the duty, we experience a peculiar satis- 
faction; that when we despise the obligation, and 
seek our own willful way, it punishes us with the 
feeling of remorse. This is, in substance, what con- 
science tells us. There is no prophecy in conscience 
that there is a divinity that rescues guilty or that 
comforts penitent men, for there is no rescue or 
comfort in conscience except when we go right. Nor 
is there in nature, through its physical processes, 
any indication whatever of a God who comforts men 
and women. What is the law of nature? Stated 
briefly, stated in the language of the people, and, 
therefore, stated tersely, the general law of nature 
is "big fish eat little fish." The last word of the 
most advanced science concerning nature may be 
found in the pet phrases of evolution. Let us not be 
afraid of them, for it would seem that they have 
come to stay. Let us look at one or two of them. 
The first one is "the struggle for existence." That 



ii4 The God of Comfort 

would not indicate that nature is a helpful, solacing, 
rescuing mother ; that would indicate that so far as 
nature was concerned, life means fight. Another 
phrase of this advanced science is that in this strug- 
gle for existence, "the strong survive, and the weak 
go to the wall.' , Is there any pity there? Is there 
any compassion there ? Is there any comfort there ? 
That may be all very good for the strong man who 
throws his weak brother against the wall, but what 
about the weak brother who is thrown against the 
wall? What is to become of him? Is there any 
hope for him? He did not ask to come here, he 
was not consulted before he was born, he was not 
advised with as to whether he should come here and 
try it — and in the name of eternal equity, is it right 
thus to crush him, and grind him to powder? Is 
there no hope, no love, no comfort for him any- 
where in the vast universe? There is not in na- 
ture, for nature gives the victory to the strong and 
enduring. Is there a single gleam of compassion in 
the phrase "the survival of the fittest"? There 
is to the fittest, but what about the unfit? Where 
is the indication in nature of the mother element in 
the universe? Where is the prophecy in nature of 
a pitying, rescuing, healing heart? There is none 
anywhere. What does nature say ? "Keep my laws, 
and I will bless you, I will enrich you, I will 
strengthen you, I will give you power and victory; 
disobey my laws, and I will pursue you, and hunt 



The God of Comfort 115 

you out, I will smite you, I will make you pay the 
extreme penalty." That is the voice of nature. 
Where is there any convincing, satisfactory evidence 
of this compassionate element in the Divinity out- 
side of the Bible? Is it in any of the pagan 
literature that has come down to us? Is it to be 
found in any work of philosophy? Do you find it 
written on the great rocks of the prehistoric ages? 
Is there any prophecy of it in that time when one 
animal ate up another? Where is there any com- 
fort for weak and struggling men at the bottom of 
society? No hope at all, except in the God who 
gave us the Bible, and in the Bible that gives us that 
God. 

This revelation of God is exquisitely adapted to 
pressing human need. Do you ever think of the 
great world at all ? Do you ever go outside of your 
own home, of the comparatively narrow circle of 
your own life and look abroad? This is a world 
that needs to be comforted by somebody. It is easy 
for the people on Prospect Heights and Clinton 
Avenue and Columbia Heights, it is delightful for 
them every morning after breakfast (as I suppose 
they all do), to go upstairs to the parlor, and read 
a portion of the Bible, and kneel on the rich carpet, 
and say among other things : "Give us this day 
our daily bread." When have they been without 
daily bread in abundance? They have always had 
enough and to spare, and they have never known 



n6 The God of Comfort 

what it was to want. What a luxury it is to pray 
under such circumstances ! But it means something 
else when an abandoned wife and desolate mother 
on an uncarpeted floor, with no fire, and after a 
breakfast of crusts, gathers her children about her, 
and says : "Give us this day our daily bread." That 
prayer finds God, for a woman's heart is in it. 
This is a world that needs comfort. How many 
poor people there are, how many weak people, how 
many sick people, how many worn and weary in- 
valids confined to their single room, one, two, four, 
five, six, ten years! This is a world that needs to 
be comforted. How many fathers and mothers 
have their hearts crushed by the vices and crimes 
of their children and of whom we may say, "It 
would have been better for them if their children 
had never been born" ! How many blind people 
there are, how many deaf people, how many crip- 
pled people, how many decrepit people, how many 
lonely people, how many guilty people, how many 
homeless outcasts ! This is a world that needs some- 
body to comfort it, for it is deeply smitten with 
anguish, and through the darkness men are lifting 
up their hands to touch an Unseen Hand, striving 
to carry their hearts to where the Divine Love may 
enter and give them comfort and hope, peace and 
rest. This has always been the way. This is not 
a new and peculiar need of the nineteenth century. 
Men have always needed a sympathetic Divine 



The God of Comfort 117 

Helper. Do you ever wonder why it was that in all 
the mythologies of ancient times they had god- 
desses as well as gods? Did you ever reflect on 
what might be the best explanation of the presence 
of female deities in these hoary idolatries? Men 
needed comfort just as much as they do now, and 
the strong masculine deities, Jupiter, and Thor with 
his great smiting hammer, and Woden — where was 
there pity or love for the weak and suffering in such 
gods? And so they made goddesses, deities that 
had in them the feminine instinct of mercy and 
compassion and pity and sympathy. We have a 
more striking illustration of the operation of the 
same principle in the history of the Christian 
church. What is the origin of Mariolatry? What 
is the explanation of the strange fact that for a thou- 
sand years men and women on the continent of 
Europe took their sorrows, their troubles, their 
guilt, their anguish, and their fears to Mary rather 
than to Mary's divine Son ? Because the great the- 
ologians, after Christianity had become dominant 
in the Roman empire, began to define Christ and 
state who he was, what relation he sustained to the 
Father and to universal government, and so they 
refined upon him, abstracted him from the people, 
and made him metaphysical and unreal, separating 
him from life and making him a mere official, gov- 
ernmental Christ, until the poor, the struggling, the 
untaught could not find him, and then they thought 



n8 The God of Comfort 

of his mother, and they said, "Holy Mary, mother 
of God, pray for us." That is the explanation of 
it. Men must have comfort : they hunger for it and 
will perish without it ; and this Christian revelation 
of the God of all comfort is exquisitely adapted to 
sharp and pressing human needs. 

Who is God ? What is God ? What are the rela- 
tions he sustains to men ? You remember how one 
day, as Jesus was passing along the street in Caper- 
naum, he saw a man named Matthew, a publican, 
and probably an extortioner, sitting at the seat of 
custom. Jesus said, "Follow me," and immediately 
he arose, left all, and followed him. Matthew, it 
seems, had amassed some wealth, in his business, 
and the first proof he gave of his devotion and loy- 
alty to the Master was to give him a great feast in 
his house, inviting a kind of nondescript company 
to meet him there, strange men and stranger wom- 
en. When it was noised abroad in Capernaum, 
and the good people there, the regular people, the 
conventional people, heard of it, they gathered on 
the outside where they could whisper into Peter's 
ear, and John's ear (they took good care not to 
say anything directly to the Lord), saying: "Ah! 
I see your Master eats with publicans and sinners." 
But he knew it and said : "They that be whole have 
no need of a physician, but they that are sick ; I am 
not come to call the righteous [like you], but sin- 
ners to repentance." What a God! A Shepherd 



The God of Comfort 119 

God, searching after the lost, carrying the weak in 
his arms ! A Physician God, seeking the sick and 
diseased, to heal them with the medicine of love! 
What a God! The Friend of the friendless, the 
Home of the homeless, the Strength of the weak, the 
Guide of the lost, the Mother of us all. 

Such a God shall yet be hailed, as he is now by 
those who stand yonder, the crowned Head of the 
universe, for he is greater in the power of his ocean 
heart to bless all shores of being than he is to make 
worlds, or fresco with exquisite beauty the crystal- 
line dome above us. 

Are you weary ? Are here any in distress ? Are 
here any who need consolation ? Are here any who 
need guidance? Are here any who need to be re- 
freshed by the way? Are here any in ill health, in 
grief, in poverty, in loneliness, in apprehension? 
Are all earthly sources of balm, and solace, and 
strength, and hope, and gladness dried up? Then 
bring your troubles to God, and lift them up before 
him. Let his love shine first upon them, and then 
through them, and at last that love will shine them 
all away! 

"If our love were but more simple, 
We should take Him at his word; 
And our lives would be all sunshine 
In the sweetness of our Lord." 

What time you are afraid, put your trust in him. 
Hear the triumphant words of the great apostle: 



120 The God of Comfort 

"If God be for us, who can be against us ? He that 
spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for 
us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us 
all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge 
of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is 
he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, 
rather that is risen again, who is even at the right 
hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. 
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? 
Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or fam- 
ine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all 
these things, we are more than conquerors through 
him that loved us. For I am persuaded" — and no 
wonder that the soldier on the field of Gettysburg 
died murmuring these great words — "for I am per- 
suaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other 
creature, shall be able to separate us from the love 
of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Trust 
ye in the Lord forever, for in the Lord Jehovah there 
is everlasting strength! 



THE SPIRIT OF THE GOSPEL 

''For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which 
was lost/' — Luke 19. 10. 

Jesus was again and again put on his defense by 
the open or covert attacks of the religious leaders of 
his nation and time. They charged him with being 
a heritic in doctrine, propagating dangerous and 
fatal errors, and with being loose and questionable in 
his practice. He was charged, for example, with 
abrogating or seeking to undermine the authority 
of the Mosaic law ; and in the eyes of the men who 
made this charge it constituted him as great a 
heretic, as we would deem one who should arise in 
the midst of the church to-day and seek to under- 
mine the divine authority of the Bible. 

This seems strange and repugnant to us, since 
Jesus has become not only the model of all our 
character building, and inspiration of our conduct, 
but it is from him, and his words, that we strive to 
derive all our creeds or statements of belief. He 
has become the recognized and infallible standard 
of orthodoxy with us. Nevertheless, in the days of 
his flesh, he was relentlessly pursued by these 
charges, and that, too, with increasing rancor and 
animosity, until he was fairly hounded to his death 
by these religious leaders. 



122 The Spirit of the Gospel 

So far as concerns the malicious insinuation 
made against Jesus, involving questionable moral 
conduct, the head and front of his offending would 
seem to have consisted in the familiarity with which 
he received, and consorted with, persons of doubtful 
or wicked reputation. Jesus never seemed anxious 
to protect or defend himself against the truth of 
these statements, but from the beginning to the end 
of his ministry acknowledged that his associations 
were with persons of tainted reputation, and he de- 
clared that he came to seek and to save just such 
people. The charge of evil associations was brought 
against him very early in his public career. Soon 
after he had called Matthew, the publican, as he was 
being entertained in his house in Capernaum, where 
also many publicans and sinners sat down with 
them, the Pharisees gathered and slyly and sneer- 
ingly uttered their evil charges to his disciples, 
"Your master eateth with publicans and sinners." 
Jesus, overhearing their words or divining their pur- 
port, at once took the case out of the hands of the 
bewildered disciples, and defended himself (so far 
as you may call it a defense) by acknowledging the 
truth of the accusation, and by declaring that he did 
not come to call the righteous, but sinners to re- 
pentance, and that the whole had no need of a phy- 
sician, but the sick. In one memorable instance in 
his life, when he was teaching in the midst of a 
great crowd, it seems that the publicans and sinners 



The Spirit of the Gospel 123 

had elbowed their way through and passed the Phar- 
isees, and scribes, and lawyers, and now constituted 
the innermost circle about his person, while the 
outer fringe of the crowd was composed of sneering 
and snarling Pharisees, who murmured against him 
because he thus received publicans and sinners. 
Then he delivered his three memorable and glorious 
parables, the parable of the lost piece of money, 
the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of 
the prodigal son, again declaring that he had come 
to seek and to save the wicked, the vile, the outcast, 
the guilty. We now find him, toward the close of 
his ministry, passing through the city of Jericho, 
and Zaccheus, the wealthy publican of that city, does 
not venture to speak to him, but he calls Zaccheus 
from the sycamore tree and invites himself to his 
house to be entertained; and after the publican has 
declared either what has been, or what shall here- 
after be the mode of his life, Jesus justifies himself 
for his familiarity with Zaccheus in the language of 
the text, "I am come to seek and to save that which 
was lost." 

How did Jesus show that he came to seek and to 
save the lost? First of all, by his unusual choice 
of a Held of labor. He chose the province of Galilee 
for the chief scene and field of his ministry, and he 
doubtless chose it, among other reasons, because it 
most needed his presence and works and words; 
because there he could most readily and surely find 



124 The Spirit of the Gospel 

the guilty; because there he could find the lost in 
the greatest numbers; because there he could be 
brought into direct contact with the very kind of 
human spirits that he hastened from the unseen 
glory to touch, to lustrate, to hallow, and to glorify 
with himself forever. 

Not only so, but he manifested this spirit in his 
selection of his disciples, for he selected as his 
disciples men who were deemed ceremonially un- 
clean by the Pharisees and the religious authorities 
of the nation. He chose not only plain men, poor 
men, humble men, unlettered men, but he chose 
men who were spiritually tough and hard to pene- 
trate, and choosing them, he never wearied of them, 
or cast them off, but wrapped them round and round 
with his love to the very end. 

It was manifested also in the companionableness , 
the openness, the familiarity of Jesus with people. 
I do not know how many such people he invited 
directly by name into his presence ; that he did some, 
we know ; but he invited many more by his gracious 
demeanor, by his spirit, by his warm and winning 
geniality. He invited them in crowds by the essence 
and flavor of his teaching, so that they thronged his 
footsteps and surrounded him wherever he was. 
If you will take your concordances, and look up the 
words "crowd/' "crowds," "multitude," "many," 
"a great number," and similar words and phrases, 
you will learn that at one period in the ministry of 



The Spirit of the Gospel 125 

our Lord his whole life was lived in a perfect blaze 
of publicity, and the crowds that waited upon him 
were the despised common people of the oppressed 
land, guilty, ignorant, superstitious, shepherdless, 
far away from knowledge and virtue and spirituality 
and refinement. 

He sought the lost by the winning and benignant 
character of his purity. Not simply by his purity, 
but by the quality, the nature of that purity! 
Purity with us is usually anything but winning or 
benignant; it is quite self-satisfied, almost to the 
point of pride; it is often self-inclosed; it is some- 
times harsh and austere; it is very rarely mild, 
genial, healing, benignant, very rarely attractive 
and winning to the guilty and impure. The purity 
of Jesus was of a peculiar and striking character: 
it won bad people ; it drew them into his presence to 
make humble, silent, wordless, but deep and genuine 
confession of their guilt; it shone on them as the 
warm breath of spring shall come to the brown 
fields. He came to that woman who rained her 
tears on his feet as the purest she ever knew, and 
what the results? Why, he gave her a new sense 
of the purity she had lost, and also a sense of the 
purity that was still open to her. This kind of 
purity, if there were enough of it in the world, 
would convert it in a short time. The winning 
purity, the genial purity, the healing purity, the 
benignant purity, is yet to come. 



126 The Spirit of the Gospel 

the lost by his death. Into the deep mystery of 
that holy death I do not seek at this time, or at any 
time, to penetrate deeply; I only know that it was 
a death for sin, and that it was a death for my sin ; 
I know that it was a death for the sins of the wick- 
edest, the worst, the most unclean, and that the 
reason he died, the ground and necessity of his 
death, so far as we have light now to see it (and this 
truth can never be changed), was because men were 
sinners. // they had not been sinful, he had never 
died. He did not die for holy angels, but for wicked 
men. Now, do we actually believe all this? Do 
we believe these things profoundly? Do we believe 
that his life and death was the life and death of 
God? Do we believe that this was the Spirit of 
Divinity? Do we believe that this picture of Love 
seeking the lost is the gospel? If so, let us learn 
some lessons : 

i. The spirit and conduct of Jesus toward the lost 
supplies us with a test whereby we may ascertain 
the sincerity, the depth, the reality, and the fervor 
of our loyalty to him. Sometimes you give your 
heart a holiday — where does it go? To the weak? 
To the poor? To the outcast? To the needy and 
the suffering? To the lost? Where are your in- 
stinctive sympathies, with the refined, or with the 
gross ; on the days that your heart is freed from its 
usual pressing, absorbing cares, do you naturally 
and spontaneously enter into sympathy with the 



The Spirit of the Gospel 127 

great under mass ? Do you want to be real in your 
loyalty to Jesus? Do you want to have depth of 
loyalty to Jesus Christ? Do you want to have 
fervor of loyalty to Jesus Christ? Then learn that 
not rejoicing in the hope of heaven, not congratulat- 
ing yourselves on your possible escape from hell, 
are evidences of the depth of your attachment to 
him; learn that you are truly his only when you 
keep his words, and drink in his spirit, and join the 
weaker and suffering side. Learn, then, that to be 
a genuine disciple of Christ means something more 
than going to church, something more than being a 
teacher or preacher, something more than publicly 
assenting to the doctrines of the church; that it 
means to do as he did in like or analogous circum- 
stances, to be entered into his disposition, that, for 
example, in every question between the rich and 
powerful landlord and the tenement-house class, 
where love and justice and right are clearly with the 
class underneath, you must dare to be Christlike, and 
array yourself on that side, however losing, or dan- 
gerous, or unpopular it may be. Yes, and vice 
versa ! 

2. The example of Jesus furnishes us the true 
method of reaching the masses, always provided 
that we really want to reach them. This is a great 
question that is being discussed in our times — how 
to reach the masses. It seems to be very simple in 
the light of the example of Jesus : it is to go where 



128 The Spirit of the Gospel 

they are for the express purpose of reaching them. 
Are we trying to reach the masses that way? A 
distinguished clergyman was invited to deliver an 
address before a home missionary meeting in a 
large church in a certain Eastern city a few years 
ago, and the question that was being discussed was, 
"How shall we get the people to come to the 
churches?" And he told them (and he had the 
advantage in telling them of being fifty years of 
age, and consequently removed from the danger of 
having his opinions charged to the natural indis- 
cretion of youth) — he told them the reason that 
people did not come to the church in which he was 
speaking, and to churches like it, was, to use his 
precise words, "You don't want them to come." 
And I take it that the reason why we do not reach 
the masses is that we do not want to reach them. It 
is a ready, simple, open, natural way. And now, 
that I may not write too bitter a prescription for 
you, let me write a prescription in your presence for 
myself: I suppose if the time should arrive in the 
history of my ministry when I became convinced I 
was not reaching the masses, and I was seized with 
a real, honest, fervent desire to reach them, that if 
I would follow Edward Judson's example, I could 
reach them, namely, resign the pastorate of a 
wealthy and influential church, and go where they 
are, and live among them, and work among them, 
enter into their toils and hardships, actually sympa- 



The Spirit of the Gospel 129 

thize with them. I take it that the way the laity of 
our churches can reach the masses is to go after 
them ; to go after them in the spirit of Jesus ; in the 
spirit of moral geniality; in the spirit of patience; 
in the spirit of gentleness ; in the spirit of that purity 
which cleanses, and uplifts, and elevates, and saves. 
Well, I know who and what are reaching the 
masses — the forces and agents of evil are reaching 
them, and they go where they are ; the dens of vice 
are reaching them, and they are put up in their 
immediate vicinity; the filthy papers are reaching 
them ; they are sent to them, and their subscriptions 
are directly and urgently solicited ; the devil reaches 
them constantly, effectively, ruinously. There is 
growing up, and it is constantly increasing, an alien- 
ation in the large cities of America between the peo- 
ple as we call "the masses," and the visible church 
of God; an alienation dangerous, ominous, pro- 
phetic, especially so to all students of social drifts 
and tendencies, to all students, for example, of the 
history of the causes of the great revolution in 
France. When the time came that the oppressed 
and starving people could endure no longer and rose, 
they were as bitter against the church which had 
neglected and robbed them as they were against the 
aristocracy that had conspired with the church to 
brutalize them. If it ever shall be my good fortune 
to be permitted to speak to thousands of the class 
sometimes styled "workingmen," or to any large 



130 The Spirit of the Gospel 

section of what may be styled "the masses," I trust 
that God will not find me lacking in courage to tell 
them their duties, to point out their vices, their 
errors, their prejudices; and to incite them to higher 
and nobler aims, to impart to them broader and 
better views. Just now it is my duty to speak to 
the church of God, and to call upon it in the name 
of its divine Founder and Redeemer, not to wait 
until the masses seek the churches to destroy them, 
but now, in his blessed spirit, to seek the masses to 
save them. 

3. The spiritual rescue of men, according to 
the divine estimation, is of immediate and sovereign 
importance. It outranks, and is entitled to prece- 
dence over all other forms of work for the elevation, 
the enlightenment, and the perfection of human life. 
Suppose, now, that you should go into any of the 
most ignorant, most brutal, most degraded portions 
of these cities, and give them your books — or I will 
give them my books — and you will give them your 
pictures and a great many other like things, and we 
will set up houses like those we live in, and give 
them to them, and tell them, "There are books and 
pictures and houses," think you they would be re- 
deemed from grossness ? They would be exactly 
the same people that they are now. This idea that 
comfort and character and culture, this idea that 
the material products of civilization can be fastened 
on to people from the outside, and their evils alle- 



The Spirit of the Gospel 131 

viated, and the people cleansed, quickened, and 
elevated, is the world's theory of salvation, and it is 
radically and viciously false. If this be the true 
method, if the kind of houses people live in are 
decisive of their real growth and blessedness, if the 
laws of hygiene are to take precedence of the laws 
of morality and purity, then why did not Jesus, first 
of all, see to it that a proper treatise on architecture 
was given to the masses of the world? He never 
Said one word about architecture. He gave no 
instruction on hygiene; he furnished no outline of 
the ideal scheme of education and culture. He did 
nothing but that which we think to be very simple, 
that is, to go about and hunt up bad men and try 
to love them into goodness; and yet that is God's 
plan of rescuing the world, and all the ages will 
never be able to suggest an improvement on the 
plan. Religion is the parent of thrift, of aspiration, 
of growth. Did I not once witness in an iron and 
mining town in Ohio the conversion to a religious 
life, in the Presbyterian and Methodist churches in 
the place, of a great many Welsh miners and work- 
ers in iron? And what was the result? Cleanliness, 
thrift, whitewashing and painting the fences, plant- 
ing flowers, buying organs for the daughters, saving 
up money to send the gifted boy away to college, 
wearing better clothes ! Religion came first, and all 
these things followed. The first thing to do in the 
direction of a perfect world is to rescue men 



132 The Spirit of the Gospel 

spiritually, and unite them to God, to fix them in his 
love and righteousness. This is God's own plan. 
Be sure, my friends, that his great nineteenth 
century can find no better way. 

4. It is the office of the highest and strongest love 
to serve the greatest need, and this is the deepest 
and most precious and most significant thought of 
this exposition. Is that strange? It ought not to 
be strange ; it is a very ancient truth ; it is not con- 
trary to analogy, it is not contradicted by reason, it 
does no violence to the best sentiments of the human 
heart. The highest love of which we know anything 
serves the greatest need. The holiest love of which 
we know anything serves that need the most divinely 
in hours of peril, or weakness and infirmity. Do we 
know on this earth any higher or holier or more 
perfect love than the mother's love? Do we know 
any higher or purer type of love than the love which 
serves a child because it needs it? Why does a 
mother love her babe ? For what it is ? For its ac- 
complishments ? For its skill? For its beauty? 
For its education? Why, it is nothing but a mere 
lump of flesh! She loves it and serves it because 
without her love it would perish. If, at night, the 
cry of "Fire" being raised, a mother should choose 
between two children, one bright and fair and 
strong, and the other weak and lame and blind, and 
should come down the stairway with the beautiful 
babe, and should leave the unsightly and deformed 



The Spirit of the Gospel 133 

child to perish in the flames, so has God made us 
that we are shocked at the act! The highest love 
of which we know anything is that which carries 
the greatest strength down to the most helpless 
weakness. We know no other love; everything else 
is passion. And then, when he comes who reveals 
to us what is the divine love, actually realized in a 
human life among men, that he does not stop at the 
holy and the wise and the pure, but that it is the 
law of God's eternal nature, the highest to serve the 
lowest, the strongest to seek the weakest, the holiest 
to cleanse the guiltiest — we have the culmination of 
all present revelations of the great, mighty, mys- 
terious, glorious God, to whom, by all the church 
and by all men, be glory and majesty and might and 
power and dominion forever! 

Is this religion soon to die out of the world? 
Think you that it is ageing, decaying, wearing out? 
Can you imagine men rising up against bread, 
against the fact of bread, declaring that they will 
have no more bread — that they are going to put it 
out of the world? I can imagine such a thing if it 
be poisoned bread, if it be puffed up with alum, if it 
be innutritious — I can imagine men declaring war 
against that kind of bread. Men do not rise in re- 
bellion against the air. I can imagine men in 
rebellion against vitiated air, against polluted air, 
against poisoned air in tenement houses, in the fac- 
tory, in the mine, in the shop, in the store; but not 



134 The Spirit of the Gospel 

against the fresh, pure air of heaven. I can imagine 
men rising up to drive a corrupt religion out of the 
world ; a disfigured religion ; a religion of poison and 
venom; a false religion; a caste religion. Against 
such a religion every good man should rise in re- 
bellion. But a true religion — that is bread, and 
food, and light, and a staff, and a refuge, and a 
fortress, and a citadel, and strength, and righteous- 
ness, and peace, and everything that the human 
heart can ever desire in all its earthly experiences. 
I cannot imagine men rising up to drive such re- 
ligion out of the world. And this is the religion of 
Him who came to seek and to save that which was 
lost. 



THE RELIGION OF LOVE 

"And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as 
he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box 
of ointment of spikenard very precious ; and she brake the 
box, and poured it on his head. And there were some that 
had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this 
waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for 
more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the 
poor. And they murmured against her. And Jesus said, Let 
her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work 
on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whenso- 
ever ye will ye may do them good : but me ye have not always. 
She hath done what she could : she is come aforehand to 
anoint my body to the burying. Verily I say unto you, 
Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the 
whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken 
of for a memorial of her." — Mark 14. 3-9. 

I think there can be no doubt of the sweet geni- 
ality and democratic companionableness of Jesus, 
and herein, as at so many points, he strikingly dif- 
fered from the leading rabbis of his nation and time. 
What the touch of the Sutra, or low-caste Hindu, 
would be to the punctilious Brahman, the familiarity 
and daily companionship of the ignorant Jew would 
have been to the precise and orthodox rabbi. It 
was not so with our Lord; he was at home, not 
only with all classes of people, but all classes of 
people were quite at home with him — the rich people 
and the poor people, the great people and the lowly 



136 The Religion of Love 

people, the perfect people and the imperfect people. 
Not only so, but, however it may pinch us, he was 
with them of deliberate choice a great deal of the 
time, and must have actively encouraged them to 
come into his presence. It is very suggestive that 
Jesus worked the first miracle of his life in order to 
increase and prolong the festivity of a wedding oc- 
casion. I spent three or four years in the early part 
of my ministry, when I was lecturing on temperance 
quite as much as I was preaching the gospel, in 
seeking to explain and justify the miracle of the 
conversion of the water into wine. Now, I am glad 
it is there; I am glad that Jesus began his public 
ministry, not by interfering with the festivity of a 
wedding scene, but by adding to the joyousness. 
Matthew certainly understood that our Lord was 
social, for the very first thing he did after he was 
called to the discipleship was to provide a great sup- 
per for him, and invite thereto a large company of 
people. 

We find our Master at a social entertainment the 
last week of his life, within three or four days of his 
death, perhaps the Tuesday evening of Passion 
Week. He is in the house of Simon the leper. There 
have been many surmises as to who this Simon was ; 
he might have been the father of Lazarus, Martha, 
and Mary, and perhaps dead for some years ; or he 
may have been the husband of Martha, and have 
been cured of leprosy by Jesus. There were many 



The Religion of Love 137 

people present, and they were eating after the Ori- 
ental style — the guests reclining on the couches, 
lying on the left side, with their feet out. Suddenly 
and quietly there stole up behind Jesus a woman who 
had in her hand an alabaster box of the oil of spike- 
nard, the costliest anointing oil known to antiquity. 
She either broke the seal or crushed the narrow neck 
of the bottle in her hand, and then poured the rich 
oil upon his head, and its grateful fragrance filled 
the room. Scarcely had the nature and costliness 
of the action become known to the men there — to 
the men, I say — until they began to have indignation 
within themselves. Before they spoke openly about 
it, they began inwardly to blame her. ' 'Foolish 
woman, what does she understand about the Mas- 
ter? She did not hear his discourse the other day, 
when he told us we were to feed the poor. In an 
impulse of sentiment, she has gone and spent more 
than fifty dollars on a single flask of ointment, and 
in one moment threw it all away; such a purpose- 
less waste as that ! Think of all the good that could 
have been done with it ; how many suffering people 
we could have helped with it !" Judas knit his dark 
brows closely and looked out of his sinister eyes 
with the look of one who was being consumed by 
avarice, and murmured the loudest of all ; and then 
for the first time the woman began to doubt and 
hesitate, and shrink back, and to be troubled. And 
then he spake who always saw, and spoke the whole 



138 The Religion of Love 

truth : "Let her alone ; she has wrought a good work 
on me. Why trouble ye her ? She has done what 
she could ; the poor are with you always ; there will 
never be a time when you cannot help them, but I 
shall not be with you always; I soon go into the 
darkness and bitterness of death. Would you not 
anoint my dead body? Would you not make fra- 
grant with spices and costly aromatics the place of 
my burial? The insight of this woman's love is 
only aforehand, and she has anointed me for my 
burial !" And then, looking around upon them all, 
with his usual most solemn form of speech, he said : 
"Verily I say unto you, wheresoever this gospel 
shall be preached throughout the whole world, there 
also this that this woman hath done shall be told for 
a memorial of her." The baffled traitor hastily rose 
from his couch, muttering to himself, "It is all over; 
he is no king; there is nothing to be made here;" 
and within the hour he was bartering with Caiaphas 
to sell him for thirty pieces of silver. But there 
was peace in the heart of the woman, as Christ has 
always given peace to the holy women with deep, 
unselfish love. 

These men were very superserviceable in their 
care of the Lord. Some men, and a great many 
men, are not as wise as they think they are in tak- 
ing care of the Lord's affairs for him, and in man- 
aging the concerns of his kingdom, especially when 
women and people of love and imagination and sen- 



The Religion of Love 139 

timent are to be dealt with. Doubtless these disci- 
ples thought they were managing all things well in 
protesting against the waste of the ointment, but 
their zeal was not according to knowledge. Here is 
a woman of love, of spiritual imagination and in- 
sight, a woman with the capacity of inspiration and 
poetry in her nature; but these disciples never did 
understand women, especially in their relation to 
Jesus, and the class of men who are of their lineage 
has not died out. Do you remember when the wom- 
en came with their children and wanted Christ to 
put his hands on their heads, how the disciples 
waved them back? "Don't bother the Master; he 
has no time for such small matters; he is a great 
public leader and teacher, and is about establishing 
a great kingdom!" Do you remember when he 
made the journey into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, 
and the woman of Canaan came out and wanted 
him to heal her daughter, and Jesus began to test 
her faith, how the disciples came to him and said : 
"Shall we send her away, she is crying out after 
us, and drawing a crowd?" That day when Jesus 
was in the temple, and the rich of their abundance 
were putting in their splendid gifts, the disciples 
never saw the lone poor woman come up, and he 
had to call them, and say, "Come here ; she has just 
put in two mites, and it is more than any of them." 
Great is the arrogance of masculine conceit ! I sup- 
pose you think you understand women; I think 



140 The Religion of Love 

you don't ; I am sure I know one man who does not. 
Very ample is the treasure house of a holy woman's 
heart, and few men can estimate the preciousness 
thereof. Many years, deep experience, growing 
Christliness is required to understand a divine wom- 
an, and especially when that woman's love blossoms 
in religion. 

There are a great many men who consider them- 
selves elected to> manage everything connected with 
the church of Christ on "business principles." I am 
growing weary of that phrase. I exceedingly dis- 
like it at the beginning of a pastorate, and I am 
heartily glad that at the beginning of this pastorate 
I was not gravely informed that this church was 
conducted on business principles. The phrase, be- 
ing interpreted, means that there is to be no enthu- 
siasm, no glorious uplifts of soul, no> sentiment, no 
love inspirations and impulses. In a certain church, 
on a certain Easter Sunday, a woman of wealth in 
the church presented a bouquet of choice flowers 
that cost fifty dollars, and not a few people in the 
church were in a state of perturbation because the 
money had not been given to the poor. The pastor 
announced at the evening service that all the peo- 
ple who desired to celebrate Easter by helping the 
poor with money might hand him their gifts at the 
close of the service, and not a single person re- 
mained to give him a dollar. The people who affect 
to despise sentiment and imagination and love in 



The Religion of Love 141 

religion are not the people who* give the most to 
spread the gospel among the heathen, nor are they 
the people who give the most to the poor. There 
is a church on Commercial Avenue, Trade Town, 
managed on strictly business principles; they man- 
aged a poor shoemaker, who had been an exemplary 
disciple for years, back pew by pew, until finally 
they managed him out of the door. There was a 
church on Gold Place, Stock City, managed on busi- 
ness principles, and they finally succeeded in manag- 
ing one of the noblest and saintliest women in it 
into the last seat in the rear gallery. Business prin- 
ciples are well enough in their way and place, but 
the spirit of religion streams from the cross of 
Christ. Tell me not that the spirit of commerce, 
of trade, of manufacture, as I see it in the world 
about me, is the spirit of Christ. It is much oftener 
the spirit of the devil! The cross stands for love, 
not for "business principles." 

Room must be given in this world for the religion 
of love, and the inspirations of the religion of love. 
Cold, exact, calculating disciples are not to be per- 
mitted to frown Mary out of countenance. The 
religion of rule, of custom, of exactitude, the reli- 
gion of precise definition, of correct thinking, of 
strict administration, of prescribed forms of wor- 
ship, must not play the despot over the religion of 
loving insight and glowing devotion, over the reli- 
gion that sees rather than defines, and worships 



142 The Religion of Love 

rather than argues. Men have a great time getting 
their religion fixed, so that it will give them no fur- 
ther trouble. As I study ecclesiastical history I see 
how often men have supposed that at last they had 
discovered the final form of the church, and the pre- 
cise and ever-adequate instruments of religion; ex- 
actly what they ought to believe, and exactly how 
they ought to worship. They have it all fixed, but 
it never stays fixed, because some woman with the 
insight of love, or some man with the soul of a 
prophet is bestowed upon the church, and while at 
first they call such a man a fanatic, or a heretic, or 
a revolutionist, and I know not how many other 
dangerous names, nevertheless he sows the good 
seed, and the next generation thinks itself great, 
because it puts into logical forms his glorious imag- 
inations. It is like a man who imagines that he can 
govern and does govern his household by rule, and 
so he fixes the rigorous rules. It may be all very 
well when the children are young, the boy five or six, 
and the girl eight or nine, and the baby five or six 
months; but after a while the boy is eighteen, and 
the girl is twenty-one, and he undertakes to> control 
them by his rules. The boy stays out too late at 
night, and the last time he was out he was probably 
in a poolroom, and on some morning the father re- 
mains at home long enough to settle the matter once 
for all, and he issues his edicts to the effect that the 
boy must come in at just such a time, and never 



The Religion of Love 143 

more be seen in the poolroom, or he must go out of 
that door never to return. So he imagines that he 
governs his household by rule, but at the last mo- 
ment, as he is about to leave, a little woman comes 
in, and laying her hand upon his, she says, "Henry, 
he is our boy, it is our home, and he is not going 
away from our home." "Well," he says, "I al- 
ways thought it would turn out that way," and off 
he goes, not so much of an absolute dictator as he 
thought he was, and all the way over to his business 
he secretly blesses her wise love. Where is the man 
of rule and statute who has not more than once 
bowed to the inspirational love of woman ? 

Love has for its radical impulse the desire to 
communicate itself, the desire to make itself known ; 
love is perpetually striving to express itself, either 
by word or action, or by some significant external 
token or sign. It has been ingeniously suggested 
by some one that this woman here was one whose 
love was deep, but whose tongue was tied — that is, 
she was a great lover and a poor talker, and that 
she was yearning, longing, striving in some way 
or other to express her love for Jesus. If it was 
Mary, as it probably was, she had indeed large 
ground for love and gratitude; Lazarus had been 
raised from the grave, and was with them at the 
feast. She had heard the vague rumors about his 
approaching death, and she had been striving for 
these months past to find some suitable expression 



144 The Religion of Love 

of her love, and had failed, when, seeing this ala- 
baster flask of costly oil, she said: "They pour it 
on the heads of kings, and he is my King; they 
anoint princes with it, and he is my Prince; they 
give it to friends as a token of love, and he has 
found me, and I have found myself in him; I will 
break it and anoint his sacred head with the fra- 
grant oil." This is the significance of gifts. What 
are gifts? They are the letters of the alphabet of 
love, and you could write its wondrous literature if 
once you could complete its alphabet; but you can- 
not. There are more than twenty-six letters in this 
alphabet ; the alphabet is growing all the time ; every 
loving gift is a new letter in the alphabet, and you 
cannot write this literature until the last letter is 
added to the alphabet, and that will be when the 
last wistful, trustful human heart has made the last 
outward sign of its deep inward love. Do you know 
how God strives to express his love? Have you 
ever looked at the sunrise in the morning? God is 
striving to express his love in that. Have you ever 
at night on the mountain top looked afar off on the 
silver lake shimmering in the moonlight ? It is God, 
striving to express his love. Have you ever looked 
out on the sylvan landscape ? It is God, striving to 
express his love. Have you ever, in a sequestered 
nook, plucked the sweet wild flower? It is God, 
striving to express his love. Christ and Christmas ! 
The mystery of the Incarnation! In them God is 



The Religion of Love 145 

striving to express his love. Did you ever get all 
your love expressed? Did you ever, in the holiest 
hour of purest love, find the fitting and satisfying 
word ? Have you ever found the gift that was com- 
plete, leaving no love unexpressed? And do you 
think that God's great love to us has been finally and 
wholly expressed, any more than ours to each other ? 
His gifts stand for more love than we can measure 
or divine. The cross of God stands for a love so 
deep, so high, so vast, so rich, so mysterious, so 
unsearchable, that all earthly symbols and thoughts 
fall far short of the blessed reality. 

"She hath come aforehand to anoint my body for 
the burying." Not many of us are beforehand with 
our love; most of us are behindhand. Joseph and 
Nicodemus were behindhand ; they loved Jesus, but 
they were men, wise men, strong men, unsentimen- 
tal men, and so they saved their spices for the dead 
body of Christ. They did not bring any love to him 
before he died, but as soon as he was dead Joseph 
became bold, and went in and craved his body, and 
wrapped it in fine linen, and they brought myrrh 
and aloes, a hundred pounds weight, for its anoint- 
ing. How much better the woman's alabaster box 
of costly oil, the fragrance of which the living 
Christ scented ! Does not our love need to learn to 
be beforehand? The most of us have some love, 
but we take care that it blossoms too late, and its 
fragrant exhalations often perfume only the grave 



146 The Religion of Love 

of the beloved. Sometimes when I go into a dark- 
ened parlor where the coffin is covered with flowers, 
and the air is heavy with rich odors, I wonder if they 
sent the dead man any flowers while he lived. We 
need to give men fewer flowers when they are dead, 
and more while they live. Neighbor A died last 
week, and two hard-hearted, heavy-witted, thick- 
skinned, covetous, selfish men met on the street car 
the next morning and spoke to each other of the sad 
event. After a silence one of them said : "That was 
a brave fight neighbor A made a few years ago to 
pay every cent. Did you ever say anything to him 
about it?" "No." "Well, I believe I forgot it my- 
self; suppose we send some flowers up to the fun- 
eral." That is the love that blossoms too late. 
Yonder is the grave of a poor struggling woman; 
her husband never told her anything about his busi- 
ness, and when he died, instead of being worth 
twenty-five thousand dollars, ten days after the 
funeral the owner of the house came around and 
told the surprised woman that the rent was so much 
per quarter, payable in advance. She takes to keep- 
ing boarders, works hard, and has a close fight of it. 
She is a member of the church, but overworked, 
having no pew, she seldom comes out to church; 
she has trouble with her children, but she toils away, 
and bears the burden all alone, and after a while 
she dies from worry and heartbreak, and when it 
comes to the church that she is gone, what is said? 



The Religion of Love 147 

"Poor woman, she had a hard time of it; suppose 
we send some flowers around." But they never sent 
any flowers around when the rent was to be paid; 
they never sent any flowers when the grocer and 
the butcher and the coal man were there with their 
bills; they were too busy to help her while she was 
making her brave fight, and so, as a kind of salve 
for their consciences, they will cover her coffin with 
flowers. That is the way we are killing people. 
That is the way they killed Frederick W. Robertson, 
of Brighton, the greatest preacher, in some respects, 
of the century; they killed him by coldness, by in- 
difference, and suspicion. But after he was dead 
they gave him a noble memorial window, and per- 
haps a splendid monument, and so brought love to 
the brave, gifted, spiritual preacher, that saw fifty 
years ahead of his time ! Do not let your love blos- 
som too late ; do not reserve all your flowers for the 
coffin ; do not keep the perfume of your love for the 
grave only. I want no flowers on this senseless 
body. I want no flowers where it may sleep, but 
while I live, and work, and wait, and struggle, striv- 
ing to set my face toward God and his love and holi- 
ness, then help me; after I am dead, God will find 
me an ample home and a fitting work. 

No gifts are so fragrant as the gifts of love. The 
fragrance of the anointing oil may have been grate- 
ful to the Lord, but what he most appreciated was 
the deep love of this yearning heart. The shadows 



148 The Religion of Love 

were deepening about him, and nobody understood 
him; the people did not understand him, the chiefs 
of the temple party did not understand him, Peter, 
James, and John even did not understand him. He 
was alone in the world, and at last there comes a 
great-souled woman who does begin to understand 
him, one woman made rich in love by himself, and 
the expression of her love is grateful to the lonely 
Redeemer. There is nothing so grateful or pene- 
trating or lasting as true love. They have a strange 
assortment of things in an invalid's room after all; 
sometimes the pastor, as the physician always, be- 
comes acquainted with the contents of such a room, 
and I have seen the easy chair, and the tempting 
bit of food, and the choice and costly flowers ; and 
I have been in an invalid's room when the children 
came in from the woods where they had been at 
play; I have heard them shout on the stairs, "O, 
auntie ! the lovely things we've got for you !" And 
they open the door, and offer their gifts one after 
another, until at last the little wee tot, that can 
scarcely toddle, comes to the bed with some crushed 
red leaves in her hand, and says : "See, auntie, the 
pretty things I'se got for you!" And it stands for 
love, and it is more to the invalid than all things 
else beside. 

The great theologians of the Middle Ages were 
rich in angelogy, usually following the division into 
hierarchies and choirs of Dionysius the Areopagite, 



The Religion of Love 149 

who gave the first place to the seraphim and the 
next to the cherubim. The word "seraph" is de- 
rived from a Hebrew root signifying "to love," 
while the word "cherub" is derived from a Hebrew 
root signifying "to know," and so they taught that 
the angels of love stand nearer to God than the 
angels of knowledge. Following this classification, 
the great artists in their immortal pictures painted 
the seraphim, the angels of fire, of love, nearer the 
throne than the cherubim, the angels of blue, of 
light and knowledge. They were right, theologians 
and artists, for nothing is nearer to God than love, 
and no heart is so close to God as the loving heart. 
"She hath done what she could." To you it is not 
given to build a splendid church, or establish a me- 
morial window, or sing an immortal song, or found 
a hospital, or endow a college; you are poor, igno- 
rant, obscure, helpless, and you say, "O! that I 
could do something for my Lord!" Do you not 
love him, and is there any gift so precious to him? 
The angels of Love stand next to the throne! 

O, Love! thou art king, albeit men have dis- 
crowned thee! O, Love! thou art king, although 
men have driven thee forth into the waste and des- 
ert places! O, Love! thou art king, although men 
have bound thy brows with a crown of thorns, and 
nailed thee to a cross ! Love is king, not power, not 
genius, not success, not wealth, not strength, not 
knowledge, but Love. O, Love ! thou art the great 



150 The Religion of Love 

spiritual prophet, and to thee it is given to behold 
the invisible realities ! Thou buildest for aye ; thou 
shalt never know waste or death ! The rock-ribbed 
mountains shall die ; the solid globe itself shall dis- 
solve; the great unsetting suns shall be consumed 
by their own fierce fires, but Love shall never die, 
for Love is God, and God is Love. Blessed are they 
who dwell in Love, and so in God ! 



THE GREATNESS OF LOVE 

"And now abideth faith, hope, chanty [love], these three, 
but the greatest of these is charity." — i Cor. 13. 13. 

The apostle Paul generally dictated his epistles 
to an amanuensis or private secretary, who usually 
was one of the younger of his fellow workers in the 
gospel ministry. Do you not wish you had been an 
amanuensis to Paul? A good many of you do, if 
you were honest enough to make the confession. 
There are a great many people who secretly wish 
they had been consulted in making the Bible, people 
who would have been glad to have made some sug- 
gestions concerning certain subjects, and even still 
indulge the belief that they could have materially 
improved it. In the antislavery days before the 
war, there were a great many abolitionists who had 
an idea that Paul was a little vague and misty, not 
quite definite enough on the subject of slavery, and 
if they had been alive and acting as amanuenses for 
Paul, they would have insisted that he should un- 
mistakably commit himself to the immediate eman- 
cipation of all slaves. There are a great many 
Sabbatarians alive now who, if they had been with 
Paul when he wrote his letter to the Romans, and 
the fourteenth chapter was reached, would at once 



152 The Greatness of Love 

have stopped him and said, "Paul, you have not 
made that clear ; that verse about one man regarding 
the day, and another not regarding it, will be greatly 
misunderstood ; you must make that perfectly plain." 
There are not a few religious people who, if they 
had been confidentially advised with by Paul — I 
mean our Roman Catholic friends — would have had 
him more distinct and clear than he is on the 
Roman headship of the Christian church. There 
are a great many people who believe they could have 
improved this thirteenth verse of the thirteenth 
chapter of First Corinthians. I have found one 
man who, if he had been acting as amanuensis, and 
Paul had said, "And now abideth faith, hope, love, 
these three, and the greatest of these is love" — he 
would have held up his hands and said, "No, Paul, 
that is a mistake; put compact organization of the 
visible church for the word love, and you will have 
it right." There are multitudes of people in the 
churches who believe that the outer form of the 
organization of the church has more to do with 
religion conquering the world than love. I have 
known a man who, if he had been there, would have 
insisted that the word "beauty" should be substi- 
tuted for the word love. There are other men who 
would have substituted the word "music," so that it 
would read: "And now abideth faith, hope, music, 
these three; but the greatest of these is music. y> 
There is another class of men who would have said, 



The Greatness of Love 153 

"Paul, if you will substitute conscience for the word 
charity, so that it shall read : And now abideth 
faith, hope, conscience, these three ; and the greatest 
of these is conscience." I suppose there are not 
fewer than twenty-five people here this morning 
who would have seconded the suggestion. There 
are others who would have substituted for this word 
love the word zeal: "And now abideth faith, hope, 
zeal, these three ; but the greatest of these is zeal! 3 
There are many who, if they had been there, would 
have substituted for the word love the phrase sound 
doctrine: "Now abideth faith, hope, sound doctrine, 
these three; but the greatest of these is sound 
doctrine" 

My friends, there is a great deal of skepticism in 
the world, and the greater part of it is in the church. 
The most subtile, dangerous, and fatal skepticism 
that is abroad in the world at this hour is within, and 
not without, the church. Bishop Foster, one of the 
clearest and most catholic thinkers we have among 
us, once truly said that it was hard to determine 
whether religion had not suffered more from the 
errors of its friends than from the malice of its foes. 
It is the inside skepticism that kills. When I sit for 
an hour and a half and listen to a company of Chris- 
tian people explaining how you are not to love your 
neighbor as you love yourself, taking up that pas- 
sage, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," and 
clipping it, and minifying it, emptying it of all prac- 



154 The Greatness of Love 

tical significance, trying to prove that it is to be 
taken in a kind of figurative and negative sense, and 
that it would not do at all really to live by it ; when 
I listen to Christian men trying thus to take the 
words of the Lord Jesus, and strip them of meaning 
and vitality, I say to myself, "This is the kind of 
skepticism that kills." When I listen to men, Chris- 
tian men, indulging in talk like this : "This doctrine 
of helping your neighbor, and of entire unselfish- 
ness, is a very fine and pretty doctrine to be talked 
about on Sunday, and after a while, just on the edge 
of the millennium, people are going to do it, but the 
truth of it is that on Monday morning it is foolish ; 
the truth of it is that a man must first take care of 
himself, and woe to the man who forgets to take 
care of number one, for that is the only way to live 
if you expect to get along in this world" — when I 
listen to men who have been in the church twenty 
years speaking thus scornfully of what Jesus Christ 
taught as the very heart and substance of his re- 
ligion, and seeking to show that he never really 
intended people to live in this way, perverting the 
Lord's own words from their plain, direct meaning 
— I am not frightened at Ingersoll, but I am chilled 
and depressed by the skepticism inside the church. 

"Now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but 
the greatest of these is love." The word charity 
here does not, of course, mean merely alms giving. 
In fact, much of our alms giving is simply an effort 



The Greatness of Love 155 

to get coarse and wretched and miserable people 
away from us, so that we will not have to love them. 
The cheapest way to get rid of a man in real distress 
is to give him two or three pieces of bread, and a 
slice of meat, and send him away, and never give 
yourself another thought about him. But the 
charity or love here described would say first of all, 
before there is any bread or meat given, "You ought 
to put your heart close to this man's heart, and find 
out how it happens that he is in such a forlorn con- 
dition." "Well, I am too busy for that; I am too 
much absorbed in my work for that;" and so we 
mercifully hand him over to bureaus of charity, and 
love him through the mediation of official agents! 
Whatever God has for me in the future, I devoutly 
pray that he may never permit me to fall into the 
hands of people whose trade is charity. Rather let 
me die some night on the street ! 

Nor does it mean mere intellectual toleration. 
There are those who tolerate other people and other 
people's opinions, and imagine they love them, while 
really they scorn them, and the reason they tolerate 
them is that they have a kind of good-natured con- 
tempt for them. The charity or love spoken of in 
this text is not the mild amiableness that springs 
from a fortunate physical organization. A great 
many people get credit in this world for amiableness, 
when they no more deserve it than they do for hav- 
ing a good nervous system ; they were so born, their 



156 The Greatness of Love 

inheritance was such, their animal organization was 
such, the circulation of their blood is such, their 
power to digest and assimilate food is such, that, 
with their health they cannot help being amiable and 
good-natured. Much of what we call amiability is 
simply a matter of physical condition and nervous 
organization, and it is easy to be good-natured 
with the nerves stowed far away under a mass of 
adipose tissue, so that nerve irritation and waste is 
occasional and slight. Love is a matter of principle, 
not a matter of inheritance or digestion of food. 
Nor is it to be confounded with an idle, lazy, in- 
dolent wishing well to men and women. We all do 
that, I hope; we all prefer that on the whole men 
and women may do well. Suppose the great Father 
had selfishly reposed in his heavenly habitation, until 
we had extricated and perfected ourselves, saying, 
"O, yes ; I wish them well ; I hope they will be able 
to get through." But that is about the feeling of a 
great many men toward each other. 

1. Now, Love is greatest in the realm of religion, 
first of all because of the evils it cures. It cures 
more evils than any other force or disposition of 
which we know anything, alike in the household, in 
the church, in the community, and in the individual. 
Love cures more ills in the household than health 
does, than wealth does, than genius does. A house 
may appear on the outside as though peace reigned 
within, when in fact all is bickering, wrangling, 



The Greatness of Love 157 

alienation, suffering. I was once preaching about 
the tender, holy memories of early life, in order to 
induce men to be true to the faith and tender, holy 
practice of the father and mother about whom their 
memories clustered, and after the service a very 
good and useful man came to me and said : "Do you 
suppose — I judge you do from your preaching — 
that everybody has had the kind of home you de- 
scribe?" I said: "Yes, sir; I hope so." "Well," he 
said, "you are mistaken ; when I was nine years old, 
one night when my father was drunk and was beat- 
ing my mother, and I was trying to help her, I was 
thrown from the window, and I never saw either of 
them afterward." Alas ! all homes are not sweet, 
gracious, and beautiful ; all homes are not homes of 
love and kindness. Love, and love only, redeems 
our homes from strife, anger, pride, alienation, 
clamor, wrath, and bitterness. 

It is the same way in the church ; there is nothing 
that will so quickly eradicate evils in a church or- 
ganization as love ; and yet it would seem that there 
are very few church organizations that act as though 
they believed it. How do church organizations pro- 
ceed? I have been connected with several church 
organizations when the question arose, "How can 
we increase our power? how can we increase our 
influence ?" I have listened to men as they discussed 
these matters, and one man will insist that in the first 
place they must have excellent music; another man 



158 The Greatness of Love 

that the church must be eligibly located; another 
man that the church must be made attractive with 
flowers ; another man dwells upon the prime impor- 
tance of having a good preacher. After a while some 
quiet man, that does not do much talking anywhere, 
and seldom rises to say anything in the official meet- 
ing, whispers to the man next to him : "Brother, I 
will tell you what we need here; we need a little 
more religion." Well, by religion he means love. 
That is what the churches need to-day. You make 
the churches glow with love, empty the churches of 
the day of their pride, of the hateful spirit of caste, 
of the spirit of wrangling and envy and rivalry, of 
the spirit of greed, self-indulgence, worldliness that 
is in them, and substitute therefor the spirit of 
genuine brotherhood and love — do that, and we will 
begin to know wherein consists the strength of a 
church. 

So it is in the life of an individual. Consider how 
much people suffer from suspiciousness, from envy, 
from evil speaking, from estrangement, from quar- 
rels, from litigation, from animosities, from fierce 
rivalries, from the spirit of malice and wrath and 
hate, and consider how many hearts are being 
burned out by these dark and malign passions, and 
then remember that where love reigns they are all 
expelled. It is love that makes the scourge of small 
cords and drives out of the human heart every one 
of these miserable demons. 



The Greatness of Love 159 

2. Love, as the inspiration of a life of duty, 
guarantees depth of insight, and clearness, breadth, 
and reach of spiritual vision. What, now, is the one 
condition of growth, success, power, everywhere? 
A young man goes into a lawyer's office, and seeks 
permission to study law. What does the wise old 
lawyer tell him? "Sir, the law is a jealous mistress, 
and if you wish to succeed, you must give yourself 
to it with great earnestness and enthusiasm." Who 
augurs well of a young man who, at twenty-one 
years of age, is in grave doubts as to whether he will 
be a farmer, a civil engineer, a lawyer, or an in- 
surance agent? If a man reaches that age with no 
work that he loves to do, drawn as much to one form 
of activity as another, it is likely that he will never 
succeed anywhere. It has been said of Macaulay 
that he never did anything against the grain. That 
may account for the excellence of his work, so that 
the essay on John Milton which he wrote at twenty- 
four years of age placed him at once in the front 
rank of English writers. You must love what you 
are going to do in order to succeed at it. This is 
true in the study of nature. Who finds out the 
secret of the butterfly? The lover of butterflies. 
Tyndal loved glaciers and the lofty Alpine heights ; 
he has found out all there is about them. Who dis- 
cerns the truth in the flowers ? The lover of flowers. 
Who finds out about the animals ? Cuvier, the lover 
of animals. Who constructs the science of orni- 



160 The Greatness of Love 

thology? Audubon, the lover of birds. Whatever 
we love, and wherever we go with a great tide of 
affection, the secrets yield themselves up to us. If 
a man loves minerals, he gets the secrets of the 
minerals; if a man loves the stars, he gets the 
secrets of the stars, as Kepler and Copernicus did. 
Now, in the religious life, a man whose whole re- 
ligious being is under the influence of love, who 
gives to love the power to reign — that man will find 
the truth quicker than any other man. There are 
some important technical questions that the theolog- 
ical professors can answer; there are some outside 
questions concerning the Bible, for an answer to 
which I would go to some theological seminary, but 
for practical wisdom, for the wisdom to live by, to 
work by, to suffer by, to die by, I would go to some 
elderly woman who had raised a large family of 
children in patience, meekness, and love, and I would 
sit down by her side, and get more true wisdom in a 
half an hour than I could get from books and 
schools in a week. Practical truth never can be 
acquired by books ; it is acquired by looking at duty 
through the eyes of love, and the soul is never so 
open and permeable by the truth, as when the heart 
is rich in love. It is well for the world that this is 
the constitution under which we live, that the 
shortest way to practical truth is through a loving 
heart, for there are few men whose time and pur- 
suits are such as to enable them to master the love of 



The Greatness of Love 161 

the schools, while all of us may yield to the divine 
rule of love. 

3. The quickest, the truest, the fullest interpreta- 
tion of God comes through love. How do you know 
a man? Do you know a man when you describe 
him by saying he is so many feet high, weighs so 
many pounds, his hair of such a color, his eyes of 
such hue, he is engaged in such a business, he lives 
in such a house ? Is that a description of the man ? 
Is that the way you interpret and analyze a man? 
We begin to know a man when we find out the 
master passion of his nature, and we never know 
anything about him until we fairly get at that. You 
may know ever so much about a man externally, 
you may know ever so much about him intellectually, 
but until you know what is really back of it all, and 
quickens it all, and colors it all, and directs it all, 
until you have followed the subtle windings of his 
soul, and know in what dispositions and purposes 
the man has his hidden life, you will never know 
him. There is a man in a state in this Union who 
never accepts office, except vicariously. He is like 
Thurlow Weed in this respect. It is his ambition, 
however, to be able to say who shall accept it, and 
now for quite a term of years he has been issuing the 
edicts as to who shall and who shall not take office. 
The men who go to the United States Senate from 
that state are called "bosses," and he bosses them. He 
sets up one, and he pulls down another, and he has 



1 62 The Greatness of Love 

been doing it for years. He would not have any 
office, you could not induce him to take any office, but 
he makes out a list yearly of those who shall have 
office. You can never understand that man until you 
understand that the great motive of his life is to have 
power, not fame, not place, not wealth. He is 
always poor, always borrowing money, and never 
will be rich ; but he lives in the realm of power. You 
cannot understand him when you go into his house 
and look at the fine pictures that he has. You would 
imagine that he was a great lover of art; but he 
cares more for power than for all the pictures that 
were ever painted by Angelo, Titian, and Rubens. 
He will talk art with you, he will talk anything with 
you; he knows a little of almost every subject, but 
beneath it all is this great ambition for the pos- 
session of power; and you never can enter the house 
of his soul except by that key. So is it with the man 
who is engaged in money-making and loves it. It 
is the supreme passion of his life; and if you want 
to understand that man, if you want to know why 
he dresses as he does, if you want to know why he 
lives in the kind of house he does, if you want to 
know why he carries himself as he does toward 
other men, why he gave to one public cause and 
declined to give to some other, if you want to under- 
stand his relations to trades, to politics, to society, 
or to the church, you must, first of all, understand 
that making money with him is the supreme object 



The Greatness of Love 163 

of human life. So it is with a man whose supreme 
object in human life is to make a great name, to win 
publicity while he lives, and fame after his death. 

Further, it is necessary, in order truly to under- 
stand any man, that we have in us somewhat of that 
which is most potent in him. Take a man who is 
absolutely devoid of ambition for power, who is 
serenely indifferent to its exercise, who cares nothing 
at all to have it, and he would not understand much 
about this man whose life is given to ambition. Take 
a man who has no idea of money at all, and he would 
not understand or be able to analyze, measure, ap- 
preciate, discern, or interpret this man with whom 
money-making is a supreme object; but if there is 
just a little desire in his own heart for money, he 
has that by which he can understand the other man. 
That is the reason why I hold that a preacher ought 
to have a large, generous, many-keyed, and sympa- 
thetic nature, a little of everything in him, so that 
he can study the men before him. He ought to love 
money, but not too much ; he ought to love power, 
but not too much; he ought to be able to read the 
hearts of the men around him as the pages of an 
open book. 

What, now, is the supreme element in God? 
What is the regnant quality in the Almighty? 
What is the sovereign disposition of him whom we 
have never seen and yet is ever near? I ask you 
this morning, on the authority of this Book, What 



164 The Greatness of Love 

is it in God which forever reigns ? And the answer 
to that question is, LOVE. From the beginning of 
the Book to the end of the Book, it is nowhere inti- 
mated that any other quality in God's nature equals 
love; no other quality equals it in authority; no 
other quality equals it in fineness; no other quality 
equals it in richness; no other quality equals it in 
volume ; no other quality equals it in reach and com- 
pass ; no other quality in God would give the faintest 
promise of redemption by a cross, the mysterious 
power of the Divine Being to suffer, under the 
blessed compulsion of love. It is the direct and im- 
plied teaching of the Word of God that justice in 
God is to be interpreted in the light of love, not love 
in the light of justice; that holiness in God is to be 
interpreted in the light of love ; that whatever quality 
or moral disposition you may ascribe to God, 
whether it be justice, or holiness, or righteousness, 
or wisdom, you can only understand it when you 
interpret it through the light of love. Love gave 
birth to justice; love gave birth to holiness; love 
gave birth to righteousness; the love of God is the 
supreme, sovereign, everlasting, unwasting, inex- 
haustible, infinite quality of his nature. And so I 
declare that the love of which the apostle here speaks 
is the elemental force in religion, because it is only 
through the experience and by the insight of love 
that we can understand God at all worthily. Love 
is greatest, because the man who would know God 



The Greatness of Love 165 

must have something in himself whereby he can 
know that quality which is supreme in God. 

Now you will understand why it is that I so often 
say that a good woman, poor, obscure, devoted to 
her home, daily laying down her life for her chil- 
dren, the great world thundering by as if no such 
being was in existence — now you understand why I 
tell you that the secret of the Lord is with her more 
than with all the philosophers, more than with all 
the theologians, more than with all the scientists, 
more than with all the commentators, more than all 
mere geniuses, for she carries in her spirit that love 
which opens the heavens and causes the very face of 
God to shine forth to lighten her way through life. 
Nothing is like holy love ; nothing is measurable or 
comparable with it; it infallibly brings God to all 
open and penitent hearts. 

4. Consider love in its relation to the future life. 
According to the teachings of the apostle in this 
chapter, all other things are relative. Tongues are 
relative; the method of communication in the spir- 
itual realm will not be by what we call speech. 
Tongues are the best means for conveying ideas in 
this present life, but it is not to be supposed that we 
will be shut up to the use of tongues in heaven. Paul 
declares that tongues will pass away. So will 
prophecies ; we will have no need of prophecies when 
we are in a world where we can see far enough to 
be kept in perfect peace. The power to understand 



1 66 The Greatness of Love 

mysteries is relative and temporary, because there 
will be no enigmas yonder to mystify and darken 
our souls. A little boy whose father is a man of 
large and full knowledge, and has the power to ex- 
plain a great many things to him, is content as he 
runs along by his side, as his father explains various 
objects by the roadside or in the fields, but when the 
boy is alone he finds many things he cannot under- 
stand. So here we may often be in perplexing 
ignorance, but when we see our Father's face, there 
will be no mysteries to explain — they will solve 
themselves. All these things are relative, but love is 
not relative, for love does not belong to this stage of 
being only. Wherever there are moral beings, there 
must be love. It is a disputed question whether 
there are inhabitants on Jupiter, Neptune, and 
Saturn; but this we know, that if there are moral 
beings there, love must be present and vital in their 
natures. You cannot conceive of moral beings with- 
out the disposition, the faculty of love. Love is not 
tentative, empirical, or instrumental. The great 
shock of death will put an end to all our prophecies, 
it will displace the gift of tongues, it will bring 
waste and loss in many directions, but love will not 
be touched, it knows no death, and will emerge 
radiant and resplendent on the other side. Love is 
closely related to the other life, in the very sub- 
stance and nature of it. Where that life is we do 
not know; what it is we do not know; it is veiled 



The Greatness of Love 167 

and shrouded in mystery. One thing we know; 
wherever it is, love reigns; no more antagonisms, 
no more ignorance, no more partialisms, no more 
envy, no more weakness, no more resentfulness, no 
more wrath, no more bickering, no more malign 
passions, no more evil, bitter words. Love reigns 
supreme! No, we do not understand it; we can 
understand this life from those higher heights, from 
that clearer air, but we will have no desire to return 
thither. After many years' absence, a man returns 
from the city to his old home in the country; one 
afternoon he goes up stairs into the old-fashioned 
garret, and he stumbles over his old sled, and he 
picks it up, and says, "There is the sled I coasted 
with when I was a boy ;" he sees his little coat, and 
his old cap; he takes them down, tosses of! his 
present hat and tries to put on the old cap, but it 
will not fit, and as he turns around he sees on the 
floor the top he used to spin. Imagine him taking 
off his coat and trying to put the boyish coat on, to 
wear it permanently! Imagine him giving up his 
store or office in New York and beginning to spin 
a top again! Imagine him trying to make his old 
sled do the work of a large sleigh! When, dear 
friends, you stand on the other side you will learn, 
if not before, that all you have been busy with here, 
your stores, your stocks, your court houses, your 
lucrative offices, your places of power — you will find 
that they will appear to you about as the tops and 



1 68 The Greatness of Love 

sleds and caps of a man's boyhood, and you will not 
want to live in them again or to exchange that life 
for this. 

I sometimes think I would have enjoyed talking 
with the men who built old Babylon. They thought 
they were building a city that would last forever, 
and now the wandering Bedouin can find scarcely a 
single trace of it. Sometimes I think I would like 
to have talked with the men who built Memphis, 
and Thebes, and Luxor. Doubtless they thought 
they were building imperishable cities, and now the 
antiquarian is busy digging out their ruins from the 
sand. I would like to have conversed with Solon, 
and Moses, and Lycurgus, and other great original 
legislators. Doubtless they thought they were 
fixing things for all times, but the laws of Solon, 
which he gave for the government of Athens, how 
crude, partial, and inadequate do they seem in the 
presence of the complex civilization of to-day? I 
would like to converse with the men who in the old 
classic times tried to compass all knowledge, and 
combine it in one splendid system. Aristotle thought 
he had exhausted the whole realm of knowledge, 
but what Aristotle knew is only a kind of introduc- 
tory chapter to what has been found out since. But 
the living, human hearts in Babylon that purely 
loved, they still live ; the hearts in Luxor, in Thebes, 
in Memphis, that knew that it was greater to lay 
one's life down in lowly service for dear love's sake, 



The Greatness of Love 169 

than to use it meanly, selfishly, they still live ! Your 
memorable and gorgeous cities, the sand of the 
desert is over them ! Your ancient and honorable 
laws — they have been displaced by more enlightened 
and simpler forms of justice. Your venerable 
philosophies — satisfying to one age, they were 
scorned and derided by the next! But love — is it 
dead? Will it ever die out of human hearts? Its 
cities, its laws, its inspirations, its revealing light, 
its cleansing power — when will they perish ? Never, 
never, NEVER, for it springs eternally in the heart 
of God ! It is that pure river of water of life, clear 
as crystal, which proceeds out of the throne of God 
and the Lamb. 



THE POWER OF THE HOLY GHOST 

"But ye shall have power, after that the Holy Ghost is 
come upon you : and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in 
Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the 
uttermost part of the earth." — Acts I. 8. 

It would scarcely be possible to conceive of a 
weaker, a more unpromising, a more forlorn and 
powerless body of men and women than the first 
Christian disciples. Tested by the standards of in- 
fluence and power hitherto prevailing among men, 
and in the light of what they set out to accomplish, 
they certainly would seem to us to have been bereft 
of every element that would augur their success. 
They might have well been the butt of the world's 
ridicule. For what were their pretensions? What 
were their claims? What were their aims? They 
professed to have been the daily companions, the 
associates and disciples, for three years, of Divinity 
veiled in the flesh ; they claimed to have lived with 
this Mysterious Being on terms of the closest inti- 
macy, and they asserted that he had given them 
solemn commission to convert the whole world to a 
belief in him as the one Model of human character, 
as the one Example of human life, and as the one 
Saviour from guilt and sin. You see at once that 
these were astounding pretensions, these were won- 
derful claims, these were sublime ends. They felt 



The Power of the Holy Ghost 171 

their poverty of power, how unequal they were to 
this difficult and vast work, and their joy at his res- 
urrection from the dead must have been shaded and 
tempered by the thought, ever present with them, 
that he would soon go away from them forever, 
and that they would be left alone in the world to 
enter upon this formidable undertaking, to begin 
the prosecution of this stupendous task. 

He led them out as far as to Bethany, comforting 
and encouraging them by his gracious presence and 
words, and now there hovers over them the cloud 
that shall receive him out of their sight. Again they 
ask him the burning question, "Lord, wilt thou at 
this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" 
Again he restrains their eager carnal desires. "It 
is not for you to know the times or the seasons, 
which the Father hath put in his own power. But 
ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is 
come upon you : and ye shall be witnesses unto me 
both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, 
and unto the uttermost part of the earth." 

Let us consider some of the elements of power in 
which they were notably and conspicuously deficient. 
They were without any of the power that comes from 
antiquity. Behind them was no splendid history. 
The soldier of England to-day fights not only for 
the England that is, but he fights for the England 
that has been, for the England the roots of whose 
history run back for more than twelve glorious 



172 The Power of the Holy Ghost 

centuries, and the England of the past is always 
present, inciting him to be dutiful, heroic, brave, 
and every way worthy of these high historic associ- 
ations. When these men and women began their 
work there was no Christian history behind them, 
and they were not yet possessed of the spiritual dis- 
cernment to enable them to discover the intimate 
relation Judaism sustained to Christianity. They 
were thus cut off from all the quickening forces in- 
herent in a great history. They were without defi- 
nite organization; the Roman Catholic Church did 
not exist; the Reformed Churches did not exist; 
the Presbyterian Church did not exist; the Baptist 
Church did not exist; the Methodist Episcopal 
Church did not exist; the Congregational Churches 
were not in existence — a band of plain men and 
women without any ecclesiastical organization. They 
were without the power that comes from numbers; 
there were only one hundred and twenty of them, 
and the majority of them so humble and inconspicu- 
ous that their names are not recorded. They could 
not boast themselves of the power of wealth. In 
fact, they were so poor that for a time something 
akin to the spirit of communism prevailed among 
them. Their earliest converts were among the poor- 
est people everywhere. They had no literature, there 
was not a Christian book in the world, the New 
Testament was not written for many years, the 
greater number of the original disciples were dead 



The Power of the Holy Ghost 173 

before the gospels assumed their present form, there 
was not a Christian hymn in the world, there was 
not a Christian creed in the world, there was not 
a Christian church in the world. They had none of 
the helps of architecture, they had none of the aids 
of art. In all these elements of power their poverty 
was patent and undeniable. 

They were to seek for power, and Jesus promised 
them power; but it was power of an altogether un- 
usual, peculiar, unique, almost startling character. 
"Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost 
is come upon you," or, as the margin has it, "the 
power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you." It 
was a supernal power, it was a spiritual power, it 
was not a power that was to be generated by poli- 
tics, literature, art, numbers, or enthusiasm; it is 
distinctly and clearly separable, and to be separated 
from these usual elements of power. It was power 
that was to come to their spirits as the result of 
their receiving the Holy Ghost. They were to 
receive it; they were not to develop up to it; they 
were not to receive such a training as to make it 
the result of culture; it was not to be the product 
of a definite intellectual process. They were to 
receive it ; it was not to be the natural outcome of 
any course of study or thought. Finally, it was to 
possess them "after that the Holy Ghost had come 
upon them"; it was a supernatural force coming 
down into the plane of nature. "Ye shall receive 



174 The Power of the Holy Ghost 

power" not after your numbers have greatly in- 
creased; "ye shall receive power," not after you 
shall have established yourselves in a great organ- 
ization, with cardinals, and archbishops, and bish- 
ops, and priests, and elders, and deacons; "ye shall 
receive power," not after you shall have formulated 
a creed ; "ye shall receive power," not after men of 
genius and wealth and rank shall be admitted into 
your societies, as they subsequently were; "ye shall 
receive power," not after a great leader shall be 
given to you, Saul of Tarsus; "ye shall receive 
power," not after you shall have built great churches 
in all the cities of the Roman empire; "ye shall re- 
ceive power," not after a Christian literature shall 
be created, and Christian schools everywhere estab- 
lished ; "ye shall receive power," not after Christian 
art shall be the art of the world; but "ye shall re- 
ceive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon 
you." This is the teaching of the text, and we must 
not miss its meaning. 

Mark the sequel. Very shortly after this they 
passed through an experience which they described 
as "receiving the Holy Ghost." They were gath- 
ered together in a meeting for prayer at which they 
were all present. They were there with entire unity 
and confidence. "They were all with one accord 
in one place. And suddenly there came a sound 
from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it 
filled all the house where they were sitting. And 



The Power of the Holy Ghost 175 

there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of 
fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were 
all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak 
with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utter- 
ance." Now, it is clear that they did at this time 
undergo a sudden, marvelous, mighty, glorious 
transformation ! I would indicate the nature of the 
transformation first by the word courage. Hitherto 
they had been timid, apologetic, deferential; they 
had stood on the defensive; the very moment objec- 
tions were made they began to apologize for Jesus ; 
or they shrank back confused and ashamed. But 
they are not on the defensive now; they instantly 
assumed a bold, fearless, aggressive attitude; every 
sign of timidity has left them, and Peter, vacillat- 
ing, unstable, inconstant Peter, faces the great 
crowd, proud, prejudiced, wicked, and guilty, and 
charges them with having slain his Master, who, 
nevertheless, has been exalted to the right hand of 
God, and from whom they have now received this 
gift of the Holy Ghost. 

I would describe, in the second place, the nature 
of this change by the word unselfishness, as taking 
on the form of an enthusiastic, positive love. Prior 
to this time the spirit of selfishness, selfish ambition, 
especially, had broken out again and again even in 
the apostolic band. James and John were not 
ashamed to have recourse to female influence in 
order to further their supposed interests in the 



176 The Power of the Holy Ghost 

temporal and political kingdom they believed Jesus 
about to establish. Their mother had made the 
request that the chief positions in the kingdom, the 
one on the right hand and the other on the left 
hand — the two places nearest the King — should be 
granted to them; and when Jesus was on the way 
to Jerusalem for the last time, the whole company 
disputed by the way as to which should be the great- 
est. Such was their spirit as recorded by them- 
selves. Now, that has all passed away; a new, 
strange, glorious spirit enters into them; a spirit 
that no longer asks for the chief offices; a spirit 
that drowns greed and false ambition. This spirit 
possesses the whole company. When they find that 
there are those in their number who are in need, 
they make a common fund, and out of that fund the 
wants of all are supplied. Such was the radical 
and marvelous change in this direction. What 
would be the effect if a preacher should now preach 
that a model Christianity would ultimately reach the 
condition described in the second chapter of Acts 
"where all that believed were together, and had all 
things common" ? Would he not be suspected as a 
communist? In this century an English preacher 
was suspected of Chartism because he undertook to 
preach the gospel along this line, and to teach that 
human brotherhood might some day be real, all- 
potent, and universal. 

Somewhat of the nature of this change is indi- 



The Power of the Holy Ghost 177 

cated, again, by the word unworldliness. They are 
in the world, but they are not of it ; their conversa- 
tion is in heaven. The word "unworldliness" has 
come to be regarded as something associated with 
asceticism, narrow, dark, bitter, malign; but we 
must rescue it from evil associations, and give it 
such large and noble significance as the spirit of the 
New Testament demands. The early Christians 
were unworldly, and yet they mastered the world, 
living beyond its weakening and contaminating 
touch. With them it meant that they should be in 
the world, but not of it in spirit; in the world, but 
triumphant over its pains, persecutions, temptations, 
allurements, and all its witchery of evil. 

The word faith, or the faculty of spiritual insight, 
discloses to us somewhat of the nature or effect of 
this supernal power received by the early disciples. 
By faith I mean to say that they had a direct sense 
of invisible things, not a belief about them, not a 
mere clinging to a tradition that the Eternal had 
spoken to their fathers, not an intellectual notion 
that there was something real behind phenomena, 
but that it was given them to see the reality and 
potency of the invisible world, and that they lived in 
the open vision of supersensuous truths. Faith is 
not a notion, faith is not a mere assent of the under- 
standing, faith is the present sensing of the super- 
natural, and such was their faith. It rendered them 
superior to circumstances. By it they triumphed 



178 The Power of the Holy Ghost 

over pain, poverty, persecution, suffering, and death. 
Like Moses, they endured as seeing him who 
is invisible. 

The opening up of this passage of Scripture dis- 
closes to us the interior nature and the only source 
of true church power. What a difference, what a 
sharp contrast between the New Testament church 
and the churches of this time! Wherein the New 
Testament church was rich, we are poor ; and where- 
in we are rich the New Testament church was poor. 
How rich are our churches in external elements as 
contrasted with the New Testament church! How 
poor are we in spiritual elements, in the power of 
the Holy Ghost, when we measure ourselves with 
the New Testament church ! We have, or ought to 
have, whatever power comes from numbers. I will 
not undertake to give the exact statistics of the num- 
ber of people in the world who are members of the 
Christian church; I am not much given to that 
method of estimating moral and spiritual forces, but 
it is a vast number, and whatever power belongs to 
mere numbers should be the property of the modern 
church. Whatever power there is in a great history, 
Christianity ought to have, for there are eighteen 
centuries of glorious history behind us. There are 
dark pages in that history, some very dark, some 
very cruel, some very bloody, but to the man who 
can look at it with a large and sympathetic eye, the 
eighteen centuries of Christian history back of us 



The Power of the Holy Ghost 179 

are full of growth, of light, of inspiration, of en- 
couragement, and of incitement to the highest 
saintliness. The money power of the Christianity 
of this time is greater than at any previous period 
— never could Christian devotion lay so much gold 
before the Holy Child. How rich are we in a Chris- 
tian literature! All our literature is more or less 
pervaded with the spirit of Christianity. We have 
Christian hymns in abundance now — glorious 
hymns, full of the very spirit of God. Open this or 
any other church hymnal, and you will find that for 
more than fifteen hundred years devout and gifted 
minds, open to God, have been giving us great 
hymns; and when we pass from the words to the 
music, what do we find but that the noblest and 
grandest music in the world has been written in the 
spirit and dedicated to the worship of Christ. The 
best music of the world is the outgrowth and pos- 
session of Christianity. We are rich in all these 
external elements, rich in numbers, rich in men of 
rank, genius, and wealth, rich in the great names 
of the modern world, rich in history, rich in organ- 
ization, rich in music, rich in schools and in archi- 
tecture and in art, while the most splendid buildings 
on the globe are those which have been erected 
and dedicated to the worship of Christ. And yet, 
with all this external wealth, we are poor, timid, 
feeble, and apologetic before the forces of worldli- 
ness, materialism, and unbelief. 



180 The Power of the Holy Ghost 

Consider how rich the New Testament church was 
where we are poor. It was rich in courage, and 
herein we are poor. How few of you make any- 
thing like a courageous acknowledgment of your 
loyalty to Christ ! How many of you within a year 
have said to those nearest to you, to the men over 
whom you would be likely to have the most influ- 
ence : "I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, and have 
been so for many years; I am keeping his words, 
falteringly and imperfectly, perhaps, but it is my 
constant endeavor to obey him, and you also should 
walk in this way"? How many men are there in 
this congregation who have made such a confession ? 
Do you know what you do ? When a man, tinctured 
with the disbelieving spirit of these times, says to 
you, "I understand you are a member of that 
church"? what do you say? "Why, yes; I was 
brought up that way, you know. My father and 
mother belonged to the church, and when I was 
quite young I joined it; and I suppose I remain in 
it from mere force of habit." Shame on you! 
Shame on you ! to let a man put you to such a mis- 
erable, cowardly defense as that ! Where is the sign 
of the courage that is the result of the reception of 
divine power in such an abject apology as that for 
being in the church? Why should you lower your 
head when you are asked if you are a member of 
the church? Why begin to use apologetic expres- 
sions ? Are we not deficient in unselfish love ? How 



The Power of the Holy Ghost 181 

much love is there in the churches that is uncalcu- 
lating, unconventional, positive, spontaneous, en- 
thusiastic? Take this congregation, include the 
preacher, as a lay member who has been set aside 
for the purpose of teaching, and would there not 
have to be a tremendous spiritual change before we 
would consent to have a common purse? Are we 
not a long way off from such an unselfish love as 
that? Yet such was the power of the Holy Ghost 
in the hearts of the early Christians, that they sold 
their possessions and goods, and parted them to all 
men, as every man had need. Unworldliness — 
have we not wandered away from the spirit of un- 
worldliness as they had it in the New Testament 
church ? We are not only in the world, but are we 
not of the world? Have we not yielded more or 
less to the spirit of the world ? Are not there many 
in the churches suffering from partial spiritual 
paralysis, weakened by drinking in the spirit of the 
world, who know nothing of the glorious freedom 
of unworldliness, who know nothing of the spirit 
of men who knew that a few years — forty, fifty, 
sixty — are not to be pitted against a vast and in- 
calculable life? And, finally, where the New Tes- 
tament church was rich in faith are we not poor? 
How many of us sense the supernatural? How 
many of us have a religion that is more than a tradi- 
tion? How many of us have broken through the 
entanglements of the flesh? How many of us have 



182 The Power of the Holy Ghost 

broken through this thin cobweb work of worlds, 
and suns, and stars, to the eternal realities beyond 
them? How many of us know that mountains are 
disintegrating and globes are decaying, but that 
God, and Duty, and Love, and Truth are eternal? 

I look out over the church to-day and I hear a 
confession of its weakness and powerlessness. I see 
many good men turning about and seeking a remedy 
for this weakness and powerlessness in the church, 
and, among other answers, I hear these: There is 
the answer of the Roman Church first of all, "O, 
warring sects, O, poor, restless heretics, with your 
hands raised against each other, come back to the 
old mother church ; you cannot get along unless you 
have somebody to determine everything; you want 
peace and rest, we will give it to you; come back 
and believe what we tell you; we have an infallible 
head and a splendid history; come back to us and 
you will have power." Then I hear the Christian 
ritualist, and he belongs to every denomination, 
saying, "Well, the race has been developed to such 
a point that you cannot have a direct spiritual reli- 
gion any more, you must have an elaborate and 
showy ceremonial, you must make your appeal to 
the sentiment of awe and mystery in people's minds ; 
do that, and you will fill the churches." I hear the 
Christian intellectualist, and he belongs to all the 
denominations, saying, "No, that is not the way to 
possess the desired power; what we need is a defi- 



The Power of the Holy Ghost 183 

nite, sharply defined creed, and a generation of 
preachers that will honestly accept it, and boldly 
preach it." I hear the Christian liberalist, and he 
belongs to all the denominations, and he declares 
that too many creeds have brought us where we are. 
"Throw them all away, take the New Testament as 
it is, and let men do the best they can in the light of 
the New Testament." And there is another genus; 
I have been unable to group them under a single ap- 
propriate name — they propose to turn the churches 
into places for holding sacred concerts on Sunday 
morning and evening, fill the church by advertising 
a popular musical service, permit the preacher to 
talk to the people ten or fifteen minutes on some 
moral topic, and so you will give power to the 
church. This plan has been tried in several cities, 
and under very favorable circumstances. Large 
choirs have been hired, thousands of dollars ex- 
pended in a single year for music, splendid soloists 
employed, and they have crowded the church full at 
all the services. Finally, the money gave out, the 
fine music was given up, and it was supposed the 
people would stay by force of association, but the 
crowd at once melted away, and the last state of 
that church was worse than the first. Either Chris- 
tianity is no religion at all, or the sources of its 
power lie farther back than any or all these things ; 
either Christianity is no religion at all, or the source 
of power in Christianity is the human soul baptized 



184 The Power of the Holy Ghost 

by the divine soul. That is the central truth, the 
vital truth of the Christian religion ! And now you 
are explaining it all away again, and saying to your- 
selves, "I wish I had lived in the first Christian 
ages; I wish I had been alive in those times when 
the Holy Ghost came directly and consciously to the 
hearts of men and women." If Christianity is sim- 
ply historical in its religious life, if Christianity in 
its revelation of the Divine Spirit coming to the hu- 
man spirit restricts the promise to a remote time 
— eighteen hundred years ago, in a distant land and 
among a strange people — if the Holy Ghost is not 
as near to your heart as it was to Peter's heart, if 
God is not as near to us to-day as he was to these 
men and women on the day of Pentecost, if God be 
not a living God to-day to us, if the power of the 
Holy Ghost be not open to our faith and spirits, if 
we have no direct internal evidence that God speaks 
to men, if we are shut up to historical testimony 
that he did a long time ago speak to men's hearts, 
but that he does not do so now, if this be our case, 
it is to be feared that the critical objector has the 
best of the argument. A religion that depends upon 
historical evidence alone for its strength and con- 
vincing power, must become weakened in proportion 
to the lapse of time — the farther off from the orig- 
inal occurrences, the weaker the evidence. Not so 
with a spiritual religion — a religion that now be- 
lieves in God and the human soul; a religion that 



The Power of the Holy Ghost 185 

teaches that the human spirit may be entered, and 
possessed, and empowered by the Divine Spirit, a 
religion with the blessed faith of the early disciples, 
the religion preached by John Wesley a hundred 
years ago, which (though they closed the doors of 
their proud cathedrals against him, though he was 
not permitted to preach in the influential pulpits of 
the English Establishment, though he was derided 
and treated as a fanatic, though he was stoned and 
beaten in the streets of Christian England) pro- 
claimed the certain assurance of forgiveness, the 
certain rest of the soul in God, the direct, unmis- 
takable witness of the Spirit, the present capacity 
of our spirits to receive the Holy Ghost, and be em- 
powered by him to testify, to suffer, to work, to do 
all the will of God — this is the religion of Scripture 
and reason, and the only religion that is impervious 
to the attacks of modern unbelief. The power of 
Christianity does not lie in our churches, nor in our 
organizations, nor in our wealth, nor in our creeds, 
nor in our literature, nor in our hymns, but in the 
power of the Holy Ghost in human hearts — cleans- 
ing, sanctifying, ennobling, uplifting, making dis- 
tinct, regnant, and luminous the whole spiritual 
nature of man by the coming into it of God. 

Will you receive this divine life? Will you? Is 
this strange doctrine ? It is the very truth of Chris- 
tianity. "Ye shall receive power after that the Holy 
Ghost is come upon you!" Have you this power? 



1 86 The Power of the Holy Ghost 

Will you become witnesses unto him this day ? Will 
you witness for him every day to the end of your 
lives? Have you received the Holy Ghost? Have 
you even so much as heard that there is a Holy 
Ghost? Have you? Have you? Is religion a 
tradition or a life with you? May the Holy Ghost 
himself incline you to receive him, and may each 
of you, and may this church, henceforth be strong 
in the power of an indwelling God! 



THE CONDITION OF THE BEATIFIC VISION 

"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." — 
Matt. 5. 8. 

The nature of the purity here pronounced blessed 
will begin to appear when you strongly emphasize 
the word heart. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
they shall see God." The purity to which Jesus here 
promises the beatific vision is in sharp contrast with 
the Pharisaic notion of purity, and Jesus intended 
so to put it. The legal, Judaistic idea of purity at 
the time of the earthly life of Jesus was hard, 
narrow, external, mechanical. A Jew defiled him- 
self, for example, by having any intercourse with the 
Samaritans, whether that intercourse was of a 
political, or commercial, or social, or religious char- 
acter. The pious Jews had positively no dealings 
with the Samaritans. The Samaritan woman was 
surprised when Jesus spoke to her by the well, and 
when the disciples returned from the city, and found 
him engaged in free conversation with her, they 
were greatly disturbed at the sight. To have any- 
thing whatever to do with these heretical Samar- 
itans was, according to the teachings of the Jewish 
rabbis, to contract moral defilement. One defiles 
himself by eating food with unwashed hands, and 
the scribes and Pharisees upbraided the Lord be- 



1 88 Condition of the Beatific Vision 

cause he would quietly permit his disciples to break 
such an important law as that of washing the hands 
before eating. They were extremely punctilious in 
their observance of the Sabbath day. One might 
walk two thousand paces from the wall of the city, 
but not a single pace farther, without contracting 
defilement and needing purification. One might not 
do any sort of work on the Sabbath day, and when, 
walking through the barley fields, the disciples 
rubbed the heads of grain in their hands, they were 
at once accused of breaking the Sabbath day. 

A scrupulous Jew, living, or traveling in a foreign 
country, upon his return to the Holy Land was care- 
ful at the boundary line to halt and remove his 
sandals, and brush from them on heathen soil all 
the pagan dust, so that with clean sandals he might 
set foot on the consecrated soil. 

One great question that disturbed their greatest 
teachers for many years, was whether an egg laid 
on Sunday could be eaten without moral defilement. 
It was unanimously agreed that if the egg had been 
laid by a hen kept for that purpose, it would be 
unlawful to eat it, but if the egg had been laid by a 
hen, kept for eating, then what ? This was a matter 
of dispute for a long time until finally a voice from 
heaven decided in favor of the stricter school, that 
such an egg could not be eaten. 

When the time drew near for the great feast of 
the passover, it was very easy for a careless Jew to 



Condition of the Beatific Vision 189 

defile himself. You remember that on the morning 
of the day upon which our Lord was crucified, very 
early in the morning, the Jews who had been trying 
or profess — to try Jesus before Caiaphas, hurried 
him to the hall of Pontius Pilate, but when they 
reached the place they would by no means enter 
themselves, lest they should be defiled, rendered un- 
fit to keep the feast, and so they thrust him in. 
They would not put their sanctified feet on the 
heathen pavement, they were too holy to touch it, 
but not too holy to crucify the innocent and the 
just. These are only a few illustrations of the false, 
artificial ideas of purity which were in the minds of 
the people to whom Jesus preached the Sermon on 
the Mount, and when he said, "Blessed are the pure 
in heart," light began to dawn on their darkened 
minds. When he said to these peasants and fisher- 
men, "inside purity, real, genuine purity, gives the 
light," then they began to understand. It is not a 
question of two thousand paces on Sunday, or two 
thousand and nine. It is not a question of pagan 
dust or of Palestinian dust; it is not a question of 
rubbing out heads of barley; it is not a question of 
intercourse with heretics; it is not a question of 
washing hands and dishes; it is a question of the 
heart, it is a question of actual purity, it is a ques- 
tion of pure thought, it is a question of pure motives, 
it is a question of pure desire, a question of pure 
affection, it is a question of the moral cleanness of 



190 Condition of the Beatific Vision 

the inside of a man, and at once the scales began to 
fall from their eyes. ''Blessed are the pure in heart : 
for they shall see God." 

Mark now the wisdom of Christ's teachings. He 
does not work from the outside to the inside man, 
but precisely the contrary. He strikes at once at the 
root of the whole matter. He does not begin to 
doctor the symptoms, he prescribes for the disease 
itself, it is not his way to cure one bad habit here, 
another there, and another yonder, but to reach far 
back and cleanse and purify the sources of moral and 
spiritual life. It has been said that Christianity is a 
reforming force, that it is a polishing force, a refin- 
ing and civilizing force. It is a reforming force, it 
is a polishing force, it is a refining and civilizing 
force, but it is vastly more than that; its supreme 
aim is something higher than to make men decent 
on the outside. It proposes something more com- 
plete, something higher and better than the fashion- 
ing of men into whitened sepulchers, without fair 
and seemly, within foul and unsightly. Christianity 
aims at the actual regeneration, the recreation, the 
revivification of men by a Power outside of them- 
selves. They have not very deeply penetrated the 
real essence of Christianity, who imagine that it 
means merely to reform men on the outside, to 
whitewash them with the ordinary social and indus- 
trial moralities. Christianity solemnly commands 
men to be pure in thought, to be pure in feeling, to 



Condition of the Beatific Vision 191 

be pure in desire, to be pure in imagination, to be 
pure in affection, to be pure in motive, as well as to 
be pure in word, and deed, and life. 

Let us study the beatitude of the pure-hearted. 
They are pronounced blessed, because they see God. 
The truth of the passage may be stated in this form : 
They who see God are blessed; the pure, and the 
pure only, shall see God; therefore, blessed are the 
pure, because they see God. What is meant by 
seeing God ? Not a material vision, evidently. God 
is not matter or any part matter. God is not 
prisoned, or limited, or confined by matter. As one 
of the ancient creeds expresses it, "He is without 
body, parts, or passions." It is not for us to localize 
or materialize the great God. God is only worthily 
thought of when he is conceived as a spirit, and 
therefore to these eyes, to these present material 
eyes, no vision of God shall here be granted. "No 
man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten 
Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath 
declared him." How may we reconcile these two 
statements : "Blessed are the pure in heart : for they 
shall see God," and the declaration of John, "No 
man hath seen God at any time? What is meant 
by seeing God? Did Moses see God? Did Moses 
have a material sight of the Divine Being ? Is it not 
declared that he was hid in the cleft of the rock and 
that God passed by and in some mysterious manner 
declared his name, and by declaring his name dis~ 



192 Condition of the Beatific Vision 

closed his interior nature and governing purpose? 
"The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, 
long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 
keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, 
transgression and sin, and that will by no means 
clear the guilty." So it was that Moses saw God. 
Seeing God in this life is the soul's present absolute 
certainty of God — such a certainty as resolves doubt 
and scatters darkness. I repeat it with reverence, I 
repeat it as the deepest truth to be known by the 
men of this time, or of any time, seeing God is the 
soul's present certainty of God by moral intuition, 
by spiritual insight. How can we see the invisible ? 
Here are men of justice, men who see and are ruled 
by justice every day of their lives, and yet justice is 
an invisible quality! Here are men of integrity, 
they see integrity in other men every day of their 
lives, and yet integrity is something invisible. Do 
you not see love in the household every day, and 
yet, is not love invisible ? If man's nature be so con- 
stituted as that he can see (not by his eyes, but by 
his spirit) invisible moral qualities, may he not also 
be so endowed as that, by the moral clarity of his 
spirit, he may see the Being in whom those moral 
qualities live? He may indeed see him, not by the 
sight of the eye, but by the reverence, loyalty, purity 
of his spirit. 

Thus interpreted, there is wrapped up in this pas- 
sage the profoundest practical importance. It is not 



Condition of the Beatific Vision 193 

said here that scholarly men shall see God. Let us 
read this beatitude in several ways. It does not 
read, "Blessed is the scholarly man, for he shall see 
God;" it does not read, "Blessed is the ignorant 
man, for he shall see God;" it does not read, 
"Blessed is the man with poetic genius, for he shall 
see God ;" it does not read, "Blessed is the man that 
is ungifted, for he shall see God ;" it does not read, 
"Blessed is the rich man, for he shall see God;" 
neither does it read, "Blessed is the poor man, for 
he shall see God ;" it does not read, "Blessed is the 
man who is capable of conducting abstract processes 
of reasoning," nor does it read, "Blessed is the man 
who cannot logically put propositions together;" 
but it does say, "Blessed is the pure-hearted man, 
for he shall see God!" This is the open, simple, 
deep truth of this passage of the Bible. Shall the 
scholarly man then not see God? Yes! but not by 
virtue of his scholarship, but by virtue of his purity. 
Shall the ignorant man not see God ? Yes ! but not 
because he is ignorant, but because he is pure. Shall 
the rich man see God ? Yes ! many rich men do see 
him, but their riches do not disclose him ; they find 
him by virtue of their purity. Shall the poor man 
see God? Yes! but not because he is poor (Chris- 
tianity never elevates poverty to the dignity of a 
virtue, there is nothing virtuous in poverty) ; the 
poor man shall see God because he is a pure man, 
and not because he is a poor man. 



194 Condition of the Beatific Vision 

Here do we find the answers to a great many of 
our questions. What has been the great question 
of the ages ? It has not been one of business, it has 
not been one of education, it has not been one of 
art, it has not been one of government, it has not 
been one of civilization ; the great question has been, 
"How shall we find God? how shall we know God?" 
The prayer of Moses, that earnest, patient, mighty 
man of God, has been the prayer of all deep, rever- 
ent, thoughtful souls in every land and under all 
forms of religion. "O Lord," he said, "O Lord, I 
beseech thee," and when a great man like Moses 
uses the word "beseech" it fills the heavens with its 
vast significance. "O Lord, I beseech thee, show 
me thy glory." That has been the passionate out- 
cry of men in every age and in every land ; not for 
fame, not for long life, not for wealth, not for power, 
not for freedom from pain, but the mighty hunger 
of the heart has been that the heavens would be 
riven, that the face of the Holy One should be dis- 
closed, and that the celestial light might shine down. 
"O Lord, I beseech thee, show me thy glory," is 
the passionate prayer of all centuries and of all 
earnest, loving, adoring hearts. We yearn, we cry 
out in the night of life for the beatific vision. The 
condition of the answer, the one universal condition, 
is in the text, Blessed is the pure man, for to him 
shall come that manifestation, that discernment of 
the Father's face and love, not through a riven 



Condition of the Beatific Vision 195 

heaven, but in holy places, the innermost sanctuary 
of a pure heart. Not the acute, not the imaginative, 
not the educated, not the stolid, not the poor, not 
the ignorant, as such, but the pure, the pure, they 
shall see God ! 

What would be the result if the knowledge of 
God were restricted to the logical faculties of the 
mind, the powers of the understanding? It would 
be the establishment of an intellectual aristocracy. 
Aristocracy is always baneful, whether it be of 
blood, of dollars, or of culture, and it has no place 
in religion; but if the knowledge of God is to be 
confined to those who are capable of beginning, con- 
tinuing, and completing intricate complex processes 
of reasoning, what have we but the establishment of 
an intellectual aristocracy to whom, and to whom 
alone, God reveals himself. There are many mag- 
nificent arguments of this nature, but the vast 
majority of men have not the time to read them, nor 
have they the previous mental training to enable 
them to exactly measure the precise value of the 
various arguments. Able and patient thinkers are 
constantly working the great arguments into new 
forms, and we now have the ontological argument, 
the cosmological argument, the teleological argu- 
ment, the juridical argument, and the majority of 
clergymen (and here I go with the majority) would 
have occasion for their dictionaries precisely and 
intelligently to define the words. Now, if there be 



196 Condition of the Beatific Vision 

no revelation of God except to those who are com- 
petent for these profound studies, the majority of 
men are left without God. If the knowledge of God 
is contingent upon intellectual conditions, the result 
is an aristocracy. There must be some simpler, 
shorter, directer, more universal way. There is 
such a way — it is by the pure heart. 

During my second year in the ministry I boarded 
with a coal miner. He was not a man of books or 
an abstract thinker ; he rose very early in the morn- 
ing, and went off to the mine, and did not come out 
until four o'clock in the afternoon, and then he 
dragged himself to the house more dead than alive. 
If that man's only means of ascertaining whether 
he had a Father depended upon his time and ability 
to enter upon the study of the great theistic argu- 
ment, he was practically without God and without 
hope in the world. Nevertheless, he knew God as 
few men have ever known him. 

He so impressed me with his life of love and faith 
in God that often in the evening I would go down 
to the family room and ask him to pray; and 
though his hands were grimy with the traces of his 
hard, servile labor, he did know the way of access to 
God, and often he brought to my heart such a vision 
of the divine as brought me direction and strength 
for many days. The pure-minded man shall find 
God whether he be vested in formal rules of logic 
and reasoning or not. Nor is it true, as a matter of 



Condition of the Beatific Vision 197 

fact, that acuteness of intellect discovers the higher 
moral truths. The disclosure of God is not con- 
tingent upon the intellectual faculties acting alone. 
Somebody says, "What about George Eliot?" I 
have read somewhat about her. "What about John 
Stuart Mill ? " I am not ignorant of his history, or 
unappreciative of his genius. "How do you explain 
the fact that they were uncertain about God?" It 
is not for me, speaking in this or in any other place, 
to asperse the dead, or malign the living, but there 
is no transgression of the law of Christian charity 
in the calm, deliberate statement that if all women, 
in their relation to men, were governed by the ex- 
ample of George Eliot, and if all men, in their 
relations to women, were governed by the example 
of John Stuart Mill, the monogamic household, the 
Christian family, would not survive a single genera- 
tion. "Blessed are the pure in heart : for they shall 
see God." Was there ever a finer, more variously 
gifted, or more richly imaginative mind than that of 
Shelley? Poor unfortunate! And yet he blas- 
phemed Christ. How are we to account for it? 
Not his marvelous intellect, but the licentiousness 
of his life explains it. I once knew a man who dis- 
turbed me no little in the matter of religious belief. 
He had read more than any man I had ever known 
up to that time; he had at least ten books in his 
library to every one I had in mine, and they were 
among the best books in the world. He was an 



198 Condition of the Beatific Vision 

omnivorous reader; and he had enough intellectual 
power to digest and assimilate all that he read. 
When I wanted to know anything about new books 
I always went to him, and generally deferred to his 
judgment. His memory was like Macaulay's, ac- 
curate, quick, full, practically inexhaustible. This 
man did not believe in anything. That used to 
trouble me quite a good deal. "There is that man," 
I would say, "the most intellectual man in this 
neighborhood, and he does not believe in anything; 
he does not even believe in God." He told me that, 
after the death of his sister, he went into the room 
where she lay, shut himself in, and, holding her 
hand in his for hours, he tried to make himself 
believe that there might be life after death, but it 
was all in vain. I was greatly perplexed, and I 
began to wonder if it was true that, in proportion 
as men grew intellectually, they grew away from the 
truths of religion. Time passed on, and in less than 
three years it became known that that man had been 
false to official trusts; that he had embezzled large 
sums of money, and that for several years he had 
been living a loose, vile life. He missed God because 
he was a false man, and not because he was a great 
reader or an accurate thinker. 

At the same time, or about that same time, I was 
called one day to a tenement house in a squalid and 
neglected portion of the city, and I found there a 
woman, shabbily and meanly dressed, with one child 



Condition of the Beatific Vision 199 

lying dead, another child sick and almost dying with 
diphtheria, and her husband lying in a drunken sleep 
in a corner of the room. She told me they had 
buried one child without the presence of a minister, 
and she had ventured to ask me to come and say a 
word of prayer before they buried the second. I 
saw it all at a glance, and I said, "Do you believe in 
God?" The quick tears came, and she said, "Yes." 
"Do you believe that God governs this world and 
loves men and women, when you see all this?" 
"Yes, I know he does." "Are you sure you believe 
in God?" "Yes; he supports and upholds me." 
"Why don't you get a divorce from your husband ?" 
"My brothers have urged me to do so, and have 
promised to provide for me; but I don't believe in 
these modern notions of easy divorce, and I mean if 
I can, to love him up to goodness." She had God, 
not because she was able to think deeply, but because 
her heart was pure. "Blessed are the pure in heart : 
for they shall see God." 

It was never promised that anybody else ever 
should see him. Where is the passage in this Book 
that says that genius, as such, shall see him? 
Where is the promise that a man shall find him by 
reason of large intellectuality, or as the result of 
abstract thinking? Everywhere in this Book it is 
declared that they whose hearts are pure shall find 
him. "The secret of the Lord is with them that 
fear him." 



200 Condition of the Beatific Vision 

There is a period of life when we are all certain 
of God. There is one time in life when nobody 
doubts God. It is a period of comparative innocence, 
openness, moral permeableness — it is the period of 
childhood. As yet the soul has not been over- 
sloughed by selfish and malign passions. Goodness, 
love, and truth are real to the child. Where is the 
child atheist ? Is he in your home, is he in the home 
of your friend ? A child atheist ! Why, such a child 
would be a hideous, revolting monstrosity. And 
why are children so certain of God ? "Because they 
are weak and puerile ?" does some man say. Words- 
worth teaches us that childhood finds God and the 
open spiritual life because it is pure, and not because 
it is weak. Have you ever read his great ode on the 
"Intimations of Immortality from the Recollections 
of Early Childhood" ? Listen to a single quotation : 

"Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home ; 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shades of the prison house begin to close 

Upon the growing boy, 
But he beholds the light and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy; 
The youth who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended ; 
At length the man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day." 



Condition of the Beatific Vision 201 

Am I speaking to men of whom these words are 
true? Am I speaking to men who have lost the 
God who was certain to their consciousness when 
they were children? And are you now laying the 
flattering unction to your soul that the reason why 
you have lost him is that you have grown so strong 
and deep and wise? O brother, I declare on the 
authority of Him who has never been convicted of 
inaccuracy and who has never been charged with 
falsehood, I declare on the authority of him who 
spake as never man spake, and lived as man never 
lived, that if you have missed God, it is because you 
have not been a better man, and not because you 
are such a great thinker. "Blessed are the pure in 
heart : for they shall see God." 

The lesson is short and weighty, Be pure ! Make 
money? Yes, but first be pure. Build houses ? Yes, 
but first be pure. Write books? Yes, but first be 
pure. Educate your children? Yes, but first be 
pure. This is the condition of the beatific vision. 
There is no other way to find God, and if you miss 
him you have missed everything. Blessed is the 
man who sees God. Blessed is the man who in 
every storm finds an ample cover, who finds shelter 
beneath the wings of Jehovah until all calamities are 
past. Blessed is the ship that knows a harbor of 
safety in every storm ! More blessed is the soul that 
in every tempest when the angry waves threaten to 
engulf it beyond the reach of human help or love or 



202 Condition of the Beatific Vision 

hope, knows how to enter into the security, the calm, 
the strength of the Eternal! Blessed is the man 
who, as he sinks with weakness, is suddenly upborne 
by invincible strength. Blessed is the man who, 
whether riches come or go, can say, "I have God, 
and am rich beyond compare." Blessed is the 
mother, who in the household, with patience almost 
divine, reveals the lesson of the cross before our 
eyes day by day, the woman who by fidelity and 
piety always sees God. Blessed are you, ye aged 
ones, to whom is given the present sight of God, for 
soon you shall see him as you have never seen him 
here, in the full radiance of his unshaded splen- 
dor. Blessed are we all, young men, and old, 
mothers, maidens, and children, for the beatific 
vision is not far from our eyes, and heaven still lies 
all about us. Blessed are the pure in heart: for they 
shall see God." 



BISHOP SIMPSON 

"Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen 
this day in Israel?" — 2 Sam. 3. 38. 

Death is a solemn and mysterious event, come 
when it will, to whom it may. An instinctive and 
undefinable sense of awe pervades the reflecting 
mind when any human spirit passes into the belt of 
darkness, long, low, and distant, where "the life to 
come touches the life that is." It may be a sweet 
little child; it may be a soul laden with guilt, 
wretched with despair; it may be a gifted or 
crowned one; it may be one of earth's lowly, ob- 
scure toilers and sufferers ; the stroke may fall sud- 
denly, or it may be long delayed ; but let the inevit- 
able hour come when it will, it brings with it an 
unearthly solemnity. Men reverently bow their 
heads; they hear the voice, they confess the pres- 
ence, of the great God. They are hushed into silence 
by the nearness of the powers of the invisible 
world. This sense of the presence of God in death 
is heightened and intensified when a man dies who 
by the vigor of his intellectual powers, the exalted 
purity of his personal character, and the greatness 
of his public services, has faithfully and illustriously 
served the cause of truth, freedom, and religion in 



204 Bishop Simpson 

his generation. At such times we stand so near 
the "thin veil that separates mortals and immortals, 
time from eternity, that the whispers of God may 
be heard by the children of men." When on last 
Wednesday morning, through the "parting folds" 
of that "thin veil," Matthew Simpson was admitted 
to the company of the immortals, a great church 
felt the hallowing touch of the hand of God. For 
more than a quarter of a century Matthew Simpson 
has been the most conspicuous figure in American 
Methodism. To many his death will bring a sense 
of loss intense and personal. Many households will 
be shadowed as though one had gone who had be- 
come a part of the family history. Life pursues its 
accustomed rounds ; the sights and sounds of nature 
are as of yesterday: 

"The rainbow comes and goes, 

And lovely is the rose; 

The moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are bare; 

Waters on a starry night 

Are beautiful and fair; 

The sunshine is a glorious birth; 

But yet I know, where'er I go, 
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth." 

The science of heredity, if not the register of 
heralds, proclaims that Bishop Simpson was well 
born. On his father's side he traced his ancestry 
back to Scotch-Irish families — about the best blood 
in the world. In the veins of his mother, French 



Bishop Simpson 205 

and English blood intermingled. The Bishop was 
born in Cadiz, Ohio, June 20, 181 1. The death of 
his father within a year of his birth devolved the 
entire responsibility of the training and education 
of the child upon the young widow, and she, as 
many godly women similarly situated, nobly ac- 
quitted herself of her task. He received an excellent 
academic education in his native town, and subse- 
quently attended Madison College, located at Union- 
town, Pennsylvania, where, among others, he had 
for schoolmates the Rev. William Hunter, D.D., now 
deceased, and the Hon. Waitman T. Willey, of West 
Virginia, who still lives to honor manhood and 
reflect glory upon the Christian profession. Young 
Simpson was a diligent student, becoming quite a 
proficient in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and the modern 
languages, and thoroughly disciplining his logical 
powers by the study of mathematics. Nor were 
books his only teachers; he was being educated at 
the same time by the magnificent mountain scenery 
of the college vicinage. At nineteen years of age, 
such was his advancement in knowledge and such 
his self-control, that he was elected to the office of 
tutor in his own college. Graduating in 1832, he 
studied medicine, was admitted to his degree, and 
at once entered upon the practice of his profession. 
He soon, however, became convinced that it was his 
duty to preach the gospel, and in the summer of 
1833 was received on trial in the Pittsburg Annual 



206 Bishop Simpson 

Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
In the second year of his ministry, while pastor of 
the Liberty Street Church, Pittsburg, he began to 
attract public attention by his phenomenal pulpit 
eloquence. He was at this time about twenty-four 
years of age. In 1837 he became vice-president of 
Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania, and in 
1839 he was called to the presidency of Indiana 
Asbury University, at Greencastle, Indiana, where 
he remained until, in 1848, he was elected editor of 
the Western Christian Advocate, at Cincinnati. In 
1852 the General Conference meeting in Boston, he 
was elected to the office of bishop. 

American Methodism has never hitherto consid- 
ered youth a crime. Matthew Simpson at twenty- 
four was the pastor of a strong city station, at 
twenty-six he was vice-president of Allegheny Col- 
lege, at twenty-eight he was president of Indiana 
Asbury University, at thirty-seven he was editor of 
the Western Advocate, and he was bishop before he 
had attained the age of forty-one. Thomas Coke 
and Francis Asbury, the first and second bishops of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church, were respectively 
thirty-seven and thirty-nine years old at the time of 
their consecration. Bishop Roberts was elected to 
the episcopal office at thirty-eight, as was also 
Bishop J. O. Andrew. Joshua Soule was presiding 
elder of the Maine District, including the entire 
state of Maine, at twenty-three years of age, and 



Bishop Simpson 207 

was elected to the office of bishop the first time at 
thirty-nine. Jesse Lee was a young man, only 
thirty-two years of age, when he stood under the 
famous big tree on Boston Common, the first 
evangelist of Methodism in New England. Wilbur 
Fisk, the first president of Wesleyan University, was 
elected to that highly important and responsible post 
at the age of thirty-eight. The seraphic John Sum- 
merfield was but twenty-four years of age when the 
fame of his marvelous eloquence was such that the 
churches of New York were too small to contain the 
audiences that desired to hear him preach. The 
acute and able Edmund S. Janes was elected to the 
office of bishop at the age of thirty-seven. 

From 1852 to 1861 the time and energy of 
Bishop Simpson were wholly devoted to the dis- 
charge of the duties of a Methodist bishop. During 
this period he made his first public appearance 
abroad, visiting and speaking at the Irish and British 
Conferences, and also at the meeting of the Evan- 
gelical Alliance in the city of Berlin. In 1858 he 
returned to the United States, having pkssed 
through Europe, Asia, Egypt, and the Holy Land. 
Bishop Simpson earnestly believed in the necessity 
of higher education for the preachers of the gospel, 
and he labored assiduously and successfully to secure 
the adoption of this enlightened policy on the part 
of the church. It was to further this end that he 
accepted the presidency of the Garrett Biblical In- 



208 Bishop Simpson 

stitute at Evanston, Illinois, removing thither from 
Pittsburg in 1859. 

In 1 86 1 the civil war broke out, and the great 
question whether "a nation conceived in liberty, and 
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal," "whether any nation so conceived and so 
dedicated could long endure," was put to the solemn 
arbitrament of the sword. From the very beginning 
of the mighty and memorable struggle Bishop Simp- 
son was a strong pillar of hope to the nation. It was 
in this broad field that he won national reputation as 
an orator of the first rank. He was a close and 
trusted friend of President Lincoln, and when the 
sky was lowering his advice was more than once 
sought by the troubled and anxious President. 
During the dark days of the war, when defeat and 
disaster to the national cause seemed imminent, 
when men's hearts were failing them for fear, 
Bishop Simpson, at the request of Mr. Lincoln, de- 
livered in the large cities of the North that series of 
powerful addresses on the Union which electrified 
the nation, roused the people to new hopes and fresh 
toils, increased their patriotic devotion, intensified 
and enlarged the spirit of self-sacrifice. It is related 
that at a time when President Lincoln was unusually 
depressed and disheartened in view of the many 
troubles in which the country was involved, and 
when he had expressed a fear that he might not live 
to see the end, Bishop Simpson uttered the words, 



Bishop Simpson 209 

"Man is immortal till his work is done." The care- 
worn face of the President lighted up at once, 
clearly betokening the fresh cheer and courage 
which he had derived from the impressive words of 
the godly bishop. It was altogether fitting and ap- 
propriate that Bishop Simpson should have been 
chosen to deliver the funeral address at Springfield, 
when the body of the murdered President was laid 
in the grave. At the close of the war the bishop was 
urged by Secretary Stanton to preside over the or- 
ganization of the Freedmen's Bureau, and was also 
invited by President Grant to go as commissioner to 
San Domingo, both of which offers he respectfully 
declined. In a time of distress and emergency, in a 
time of great national peril, he did not forget that he 
was a citizen of the republic, but when peace re- 
turned he did not forget that he was a Christian 
bishop. 

In the year 1773, when the first Annual Confer- 
ence of Methodist preachers met in the city of 
Philadelphia, thirty-eight years before his birth, the 
statistics of American Methodism occupied small 
space. They were as follows : Preachers, 10; mem- 
bers of the societies, 1,160. At the time of his birth 
the Methodist Episcopal Church had been formally 
organized but twenty-seven years, and Bishop As- 
bury was still exercising his apostolic ministry. In 
181 1, the year of his birth, the communicants of the 
church numbered 184,567. At that time there was 



210 Bishop Simpson 

not a single academy or collegiate institution in the 
country owned or controlled by the people called 
"Methodists." The Missionary Society was not or- 
ganized until the year 1819, nor did it send out its 
first foreign missionary until after he had attained 
his majority. The expansion and growth of Amer- 
ican Methodism during his lifetime is probably not 
surpassed, if indeed it is equaled, in the entire his- 
tory of organized Christianity. The number of 
traveling preachers had grown from between 500 
and 600, in 181 1, to over 25,000, in 1883. The 
number of local preachers rose to over 34,000; of 
lay members from 184,567 to nearly 4,000,000, or 
stated exactly, to 3,993,820. Five years after he 
was chosen bishop, that is, in 1857, the number of 
our church buildings was 8,335, valued at more than 
$15,000,000; the number of parsonages was 2,174, 
valued at something over $2,000,000. In 1882 the 
number of church buildings was 18,152, valued at 
more than $65,000,000; the number of parsonages 
was 6,224, valued at more than $9,000,000. In 
twenty-five years the increase in the number of 
church buildings was 7,817, and the increase in 
value was over $49,000,000; the increase in the 
number of parsonages was 4,050, and the increase 
in value of parsonages was more than $7,000,000. 
The receipts of the Missionary Society during the 
year 1820, the first year of its existence, when Mat- 
thew Simpson was a boy nine years old, were 



Bishop Simpson 211 

$823.04; the receipts in 1852, the year of his elec- 
tion to the episcopacy, were $150,482.48; the re- 
ceipts last year, 1883, were $751,469.90. The num- 
ber of missionaries, home and foreign, employed by 
the society in 1883 was 2,485; the ordained native 
preachers numbered 252, and the unordained native 
preachers 192. The total number of members in 
home and foreign mission fields was over 46,000; 
scholars in mission Sunday schools, 62,878 ; number 
of churches and other houses of worship, 1,281, 
valued at $1,404,166. The whole of this gratifying 
missionary progress was accomplished within the 
working lifetime of Bishop Simpson. This church, 
which in 181 1, the year of the bishop's birth, was 
without any educational institutions, in 1883 
owned 92 classical seminaries and female colleges, 
43 colleges and universities, and 9 theological 
schools; its students numbered over 26,000, and its 
educational property was valued at over $7,400,000. 
During this period of unexampled growth and 
prosperity, the labors, the devotion, the wisdom, and 
the eloquence of Bishop Simpson were unsurpassed 
by any chief minister among us. He was indeed a 
great man, tested by any standard of greatness 
which we may adopt. His intellectual powers were 
of the very highest quality, and he subjected them to 
the most constant, thorough, and exacting discipline 
throughout his whole life. His knowledge was ex- 
tended and diversified, embracing in its wide sweep 



212 Bishop Simpson 

the finest and most precious results of human inves- 
tigation in almost every field, literature, history, 
science, philosophy, poetry, art, medicine, and theol- 
ogy. If superiority to adverse circumstances be a 
mark of greatness, Bishop Simpson was a great man. 
In a country like ours, where the accidents of birth 
and fortune count for little, it is a long, toilsome, 
and difficult road from the village academy to ac- 
knowledged leadership in church and state. Faith 
in the people, faith in their virtue, their honor, their 
capacity, their patience and steadfastness, their 
patriotic devotion and self-sacrifice, is usually es- 
teemed a mark of greatness, and the faith of Mat- 
thew Simpson in the moral soundness of the 
American people never wavered for a single instant. 
It has been said that a great man is one who causes 
things to come to pass, who possesses the ability to 
effect results, who is able so to impress and move 
men so as to secure the accomplishment of his pur- 
poses. Then Bishop Simpson was a great man, for 
it is to be doubted if, since Francis Asbury, any man 
in Methodism effected a greater number of practical 
results than did he. He possessed great simplicity, 
purity, and humility of character. His integrity 
was open and manifest. The breath of suspicion 
never touched the whiteness of his soul. He was 
quick to perceive, slow to speak — a rare and happy 
combination. He had convictions, and the courage 
of them, and, withal, was modest, unpretending, 



Bishop Simpson 213 

teachable, free from the least trace of vanity and 
self-seeking. He was careful and patient in coming 
to his conclusions, firm and inflexible in maintaining 
them. Every cause that proposed the enlightenment, 
the elevation, the virtue, the progress, the enfran- 
chisement of men had his earnest sympathy and 
support. He was possessed of rare and admirable 
equipoise of character — a quality indicative of the 
very highest type of greatness. His greatness was 
distinctly of the ethical and spiritual order. He was 
a scholar, but he was more than a scholar ; he was a 
writer, but he was more than a writer; he was an 
orator, but he was more than an orator; he was a 
thinker, but he was more than a thinker; he was 
a philosopher, but he w T as more than a philosopher. 
In his life work we are enabled clearly to see what 
we are so often forgetting, namely, the immeasur- 
able superiority of character over mere intellectual 
gifts and acquirement. His mastery of men was 
chiefly due to the righteousness of his personal 
character. Integrity, character, essentially Chris- 
tian manliness, all that w^e mean by the noble word 
"righteousness," is, after all, the supreme element in 
human life. Nations and churches are made strong 
by its possession. Its decay is the precursor of 
weakness and cowardice, its absence is death. A 
nation is invincible that gives the supreme place to 
character, and the grand design of the gospel is to 
bring men to perfect manhood, unto the measure of 



214 Bishop Simpson 

the stature of the fullness of Christ. What we are — 
not what we know, or what we have, or what we say, 
or what we believe — what we are, that determines 
our power and peace, by that we stand or fall, in this, 
and in all worlds. 

In Bishop Simpson was seen the happy union of 
the most opposite qualities, the harmonious and per- 
fect adjustment of intellectual characteristics usually 
deemed incomparable and antagonistic. He pos- 
sessed in an eminent degree the fervid temperament, 
the quick, glancing fancy, the glowing and vivid 
imagination of the magnetic and irresistible orator; 
his blood was capable of the degree of heat necessary 
to the loftiest eloquence, and he was at the same time 
justly distinguished as an administrative and execu- 
tive officer. He was patient, laborious, painstaking, 
thorough, giving careful attention to details, slur- 
ring no task, however insignificant, endowed with a 
vast capacity for work. His insight into human 
character was quick, accurate, and at times remark- 
able, and he was equally at home presiding over the 
Conferences, fixing the appointments of the preach- 
ers, inspiring and guiding the educational progress 
of the church, devising comprehensive measures for 
its future growth, quickening, and directing its mis- 
sionary zeal and fervor. He was tried in various 
fields of exertion, each requiring for success the 
highest order of ability, and in every instance he 
was found equal to the work imposed upon him. 



Bishop Simpson 215 

He was tried as a pastor and preacher in a strong 
city church at twenty-four years of age; he was 
tried as an instructor of youth, he was tried as the 
chief executive officer of a college, he was tried as 
an editor, he was tried as the confidential adviser of 
Abraham Lincoln, he was tried in all the delicate, 
multifarious, and arduous duties attaching to the 
episcopal office in Methodism, he was tried as an 
author, as a popular tribune, on the lecture platform, 
in the pulpit, and everywhere his success was clear, 
undisputed, conspicuous. The Methodist Episcopal 
Church has grown rapidly during the last half cen- 
tury, but it never outgrew Matthew Simpson. His 
wisdom in administration kept pace with the ex- 
pansion and increasing complexity of the work of 
the church. He was never found in the rear of her 
progress. Instead of idly and weakly extolling the 
days and wisdom of the fathers, he steadily sought 
to comprehend and discharge the duties growing out 
of the changed and changing circumstances of our 
eager, pushing, progressive American life. The 
questions he asked were not, What were the duties 
of the fathers of Methodism? but, What are our 
duties, and, how may we best discharge them ? 

Bishop Simpson, in the language of a great news- 
paper, "adorned the episcopal office with gentleness, 
humility, and devotion.'' His piety was of the high- 
est order — sincere, deep, unostentatious, calm, de- 
voted. Under its influence he lived a blameless and 



216 Bishop Simpson 

holy life, never giving the enemy occasion to blas- 
pheme, and drawing thousands within the hallowed 
circle of his personal influence. His life was one of 
penitence, faith, and prayer, of profound spiritual 
aspiration, or deep and sanctifying communion with 
God, and his spirit was ever fragrant with the sweet 
odors of the skies. His conversation was in heaven. 
His life was hid with Christ in God. In manners he 
was gentle, attractive, courteous, approachable, dig- 
nified. The humblest and plainest were at home in 
his presence, and only the forward, the vain, the 
intrusive were ever rebuked by the firmness and 
decision which on occasion he was wont to call into 
vigorous exercise. 

The throne of his peculiar and highest power was 
the pulpit. It is not meant to take aught from his 
honorable renown in other fields of activity, when 
the statement is made that his greatness culminated 
in the pulpit. It is not too much to say that Matthew 
Simpson, when on fitting occasions he was fully 
aroused, was the greatest preacher in American 
Methodism, and one of the greatest in all Christen- 
dom. His eloquence was undefinable and indescrib- 
able. It is true that he was simplicity itself in mat- 
ter and manner, but simplicity was not the secret of 
his eloquence, for have we not heard many men who 
were fairly entitled to the credit of simplicity who, 
nevertheless, were far removed from eloquence? 
He was a remarkably fluent speaker, but have we 



Bishop Simpson 217 

not long ago learned that mere fluency does not 
constitute eloquence ? He was exact, accurate, clear, 
forcible in his style, but who does not know that 
one may be accurate, clear, energetic in his speech 
without being eloquent ? He had a voice of peculiar 
and remarkable power, clear, distinct, penetrating, 
sympathetic, of great compass and sweep at times, 
but there have been not a few preachers with voices 
equal to his in every regard who have never, even 
by their closest friends, been suspected of eloquence. 
He was apt, felicitous, and rich in illustration, but 
there are many illustrative preachers who have never 
attained to the heights of eloquence. He was humble, 
conscientious, devout, prayerful, but how many 
humble, conscientious, devout, prayerful preachers 
of the gospel are there who have never felt the divine 
glow of eloquence ? His eloquence — it was the high 
and sacred gift of God. It came to him without 
seeking or training. It came to him as the sunshine 
comes to the fields, as the breeze rustles the tall corn, 
as song comes to birds in spring, as fragrance comes 
to roses in June, as love is born in the hearts of 
lovers. He used his splendid gift right royally. 
He consecrated his glorious eloquence to the one 
great work of uttering forth the good news of the 
gospel, the riches of the divine love in Jesus Christ, 
the fullness and tenderness and preciousness of that 
grace which brings salvation to all men. Some of 
us have been the willing subjects of his superb pow- 



218 Bishop Simpson 

ers, and long will the memory linger of the youthful 
days made bright and free and strong by the rare 
eloquence of Matthew Simpson! He touched our 
eyes, and we saw strange sights. He unstopped our 
ears, and it seemed to us that the angels' songs were 
not far away. He gave us wings, we rose, and 
breathed a purer air. He waved the magic wand of 
his resistless eloquence before us, and lo ! the sordid- 
ness of our existence disappeared, life took on new 
shapes and higher dignity ; we felt ourselves to be in 
very truth the sons of God. 

Bishop Simpson was the friend, the inspirer, the 
guide, and the model of many noble and ingenuous 
youths. Thousands of strong and gifted men con- 
fess to-day with pride and joy that they derived 
from him the loftiest aims, the holiest impulses, the 
choicest inspirations of their lives. If, standing in 
this church, which by his office and ministry was 
solemnly dedicated to the worship of Almighty 
God, he should address the young men here present, 
what would he say ? Speaking as a father would he 
not say: "Remember now thy Creator in the days 
of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the 
years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have not 
pleasure in them"? Should he speak as a teacher, 
would he not use these words : "Add to your faith 
virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge 
self-control, and to self-control godliness, and to 
godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly 



Bishop Simpson 219 

kindness charity, for if these things be in you and 
abound, they make you that ye shall neither be bar- 
ren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord 
Jesus Christ" ? If he spoke as a friend and brother, 
would he not say: "Prize above all earthly acquire- 
ments, above all material possessions, the wisdom 
that is from above, which is first pure, then peace- 
able, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy 
and good fruit, without wrangling, and without 
hypocrisy"? If he spoke as a patriot, would not 
these be his words : 

"I charge thee, fling away ambition; 
By that sin fell the angels. How can man, then, 
The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't? 

Be just and fear not. 
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's, 
Thy God's, and truth's ; then if thou fall'st, 

Thou fall'st a blessed martyr"? 

If he spoke as a preacher of the gospel, would not 
this be his message : "Seek ye first the kingdom of 
God, and his righteousness, and all these things 
shall be added unto you" ? 

Matthew Simpson, born in Cadiz, Ohio, June 20, 
181 1, graduated in 1832, entered the Christian min- 
istry in 1833, elected a bishop of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church in 1852, died in Philadelphia, 
Pennsylvania, June 18, 1884. And is this all? 

We cannot ascertain the quantity or the quality of 
a human life by statistics. We have not measured 



220 Bishop Simpson 

or expressed a life when we can glibly repeat the 
dates of birth and marriage and death. If we have 
truly lived, the invisible, spiritual element has been 
abiding and potent. There is more of life than the 
cradle, the marriage altar, the workshop, and the 
grave. The life our great bishop lived erewhile it 
pleased God to take him, was a life that could not 
be expressed or measured by a few figures and other 
external data. The finest and divinest part of life is 
unseen, unheard, unknown of the world. It is lived 
in the deepest silence. Who shall fitly speak of his 
invisible, spiritual life? It is easy to tell when and 
where he was born, who his parents were, what 
schools he attended, when he entered the ministry, 
how many years he exercised his episcopate, when 
he married, and where he died. But of the dreams 
and hopes and plans of his early youth, of his inter- 
nal wrestlings with doubt and fear, of the lonely 
sorrows the years brought to him, of the temptations 
he met, and faced, and conquered, of the entire 
sweep and complexion of his inner life, of the min- 
istry of light and shadow in the subtle growth of his 
character, of his mysterious and solemn question- 
ings in life's trial hours, of the silent battles he 
bravely fought as in the very presence of God, of 
these things it is not given us to speak. This we 
know, that they made up his real life, and if we may 
judge of the nature of the conflict by the results 
distinctly traceable in his character, he lived in all 



Bishop Simpson 221 

good conscience before God, steadily refusing to 
serve the false and base, humbly and reverently 
drinking the cup his Father handed him, accepting 
with unfaltering loyalty of spirit the work God gave 
him to do. If we were masters of the art of in- 
stantaneous spiritual photography, we would see 
how, by God's grace, he kept his soul clean and 
white during all the years of his life struggle. 

The departure hence of such a royally-endowed 
soul reminds us of the essential greatness and inher- 
ent dignity of the spirit of man. We are accustomed 
to extol the institutions founded by the wisdom of 
man. We admire his prowess, his daring, his 
sagacity, his mighty triumphs over nature in the air, 
on land and sea. We stand in wonder before the 
immortal productions of his genius, his cities, his 
industries, his commerce, his schools, his civiliza- 
tion, his philosophies, his literature, his arts, his 
music, his governments; his wonderful inventions 
amaze and charm us ; but there is something greater 
than all these things, namely, man himself. The- 
mistocles was greater than Athens, Columbus was 
greater than his ships, Bacon was greater than his 
philosophy, Milton was greater than his poems, 
Raphael was greater than his pictures, Beethoven 
was greater than his symphonies, Shakespeare was 
greater than "Lear" or "Hamlet," Wellington was 
greater than Waterloo, Lincoln was greater than 
the Presidency. 



222 Bishop Simpson 

Greater than all beauty of art is the spirit of man, 
for whom and by whom all beauty of art is devised. 
The men who write constitutions for nations are 
greater than the constitutions they write. Greater 
than the work is the worker, greater than the deed is 
the doer, greater than the thought is the thinker, 
greater than the sacrifice is the offerer. There is 
here a greater than the temple. The spirit of man is 
the holiest altar of God. We know not all the 
agencies which wrought out the glorious character 
of our departed chief pastor. We cannot number 
the tools and instruments of his culture ; we may not 
precisely calculate how he was quickened, colored, 
affected, and molded by this or that institution of 
human devising; we saw not the scaffolding that 
was employed in the erection of this spiritual temple 
of God. This we see distinctly and clearly, now 
that he is gone from us, that no agencies, no tools, 
no instruments, no scaffolding, no disciplines, noth- 
ing is as great as the immortal spirit. These perish 
and are forgotten; that is forever lustrous with the 
beauty of God. 

Life increases in loneliness and mystery as we 
journey on. We set out with a great and joyous 
company, but the ranks are thinned as the years 
hurry by, and those who remain to walk at our side 
are not so light hearted as of yore. We listen for 
the sound of footfalls we shall never hear again. 
We strain our aching eyes, but the dear faces will 



Bishop Simpson 223 

here shine upon us no more. We walk amid graves. 
The graves may be green, the flowers may be fra- 
grant above them; but still they are graves, silent, 
lonely, mysterious. The shadows lengthen and the 
sun hastens to the west. With unresting feet we 
march to join the countless armies of the dead. The 
chill breath of night will soon calm our fevered 
brows, and we shall go to where all things are made 
plain. A choice spirit has left us. Whither has he 
gone ? The shell of his splendid manhood is already 
coffined for the grave! Where now is his knowl- 
edge, his faith, his conscience, his purity, his 
spiritual sentiments, his wealth of glorious faculty? 
Has nature, in a fit of impatience, stamped them out 
forever? What kind of a theory of life is that 
which condemns the most precious things to remedi- 
less destruction, and gives a wide sweep of being to 
gross, inanimate objects? Has the irreversible de- 
cree gone forth that choice, valorous, virtuous 
spirits are appointed to swift and complete ruin, 
while to rocks and hills and mountains belong 
millenniums of life ? Shall we charge God with the 
incredible folly of richly endowing human spirits, 
and launching them on the dangerous sea of exist- 
ence, knowing all the time that they will go down 
in darkness and blackness forever! Surely not! 
They reach a safe harbor. Their feet touch a golden 
shore. They behold the gleam of the City of Jasper 
and Pearl. 



224 Bishop Simpson 

Let us believe 

"That nothing walks with aimless feet: 
That not one life shall be destroyed, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete." 

Let us believe that to him has been given 

"A life that bears immortal fruit 
In such great offices as suit 
The full-grown energies of heaven." 

Let us believe that we shall greet, and be greeted 
by him in the eternal reunions of the skies, when, 
like him, we rest in the peace of God. 

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; 
He is gone who seemed so great — 
Gone; but nothing can bereave him 
Of the force he made his own 
Being here, and we believe him 
Something far advanced in state, 
And that he wears a truer crown 
Than any wreath than man can weave him. 
But speak no more of his renown, 
Lay your earthly fancies down, 
And in the 'silent city' leave him. 
God accept him. Christ receive him." 

O ! my father, hail and farewell ! 



THE CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION 

''He is not here ; for he is risen, as he said." — Matt. 28. 6. 
"Wherefore comfort one another with these words." — 
1 Thess. 4. 18. 

The death of Jesus was beheld, among others, by 
many women who had followed him from Galilee, 
and whose delight and joy it had been to minister 
to him. It is said that they beheld the crucifixion 
afar off* — doubtless prevented by the crowd of spec- 
tators and the Roman guard, from a nearer approach 
to the Lord they loved. When Joseph of Arima- 
thea, with many tears and some self-reproaches, had 
tenderly and reverently laid the body of Jesus in 
his new rock tomb, as he turned to go away he de- 
scried in the gathering darkness, directly opposite 
the grave, two silent, motionless female figures. 
"And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other 
Mary, sitting over against the sepulcher." O, 
woman, sacred is the mystery of thy love and grief ! 
Very early in the morning of the first day of the 
week, as, with the eager steps of love, they hastened 
to the grave with their spices and ointments, they 
were met by the angel of the Lord; his counte- 
nance shone like lightning, his raiment was white as 
snow, and for fear of him the keepers of the tomb 
did shake and become as dead men. Perplexed, 



226 Credibility of the Resurrection 

bewildered, affrighted, the trembling women hesi- 
tated and drew back until they heard the reassuring 
voice of the angel saying unto them : "Fear not ye; 
for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified; 
he is not here : for he is risen, as he said ; come, see 
the place where the Lord lay." 

These are great words, my friends. The triumph 
of Jesus over death is the pledge and the promise, 
the prophecy and the proof that we shall not be 
holden of his power, his defeat at this point is our 
defeat, and his victory is our victory. If death 
mastered him, we may be sure it will master us; if 
death was strong enough to put out forever the 
light of such a being as his, with a very light blow 
it can put out the light of our being forever. If he 
mastered death, we that are his shall master it, and 
because he lives we shall live also. If ever this 
corruptible shall put on incorruption, if ever this 
mortal shall put on immortality, if ever shall be 
brought to pass the saying that is written, "Death 
is swallowed up in victory," it will be because he 
lived, and died, and rose again, and, ascending on 
high, led captivity captive. Forasmuch then as the 
children were partakers of flesh and blood, he also, 
himself, likewise took part of the same, that by 
passing through the experience of death he might 
destroy him that had the power of death, and that 
he might deliver them who through the fear of 
death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. It 



Credibility of the Resurrection 227 

is altogether fitting, therefore, that on this Easter 
Sunday morning, we should meditate upon the na- 
ture and the strength of the evidence of the great 
truth that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, to the 
end that our faith may be strengthened, that our 
courage may be replenished, that our hearts may be 
comforted, and that our love and devotion may be 
new-enkindled. In doing so, I beg you not to put 
yourselves into a jury box, and make me appear as 
a special pleader. This debate is not conducted by 
a hired advocate, appealing to a jury without any 
personal interest in the issue ; it is not the speech of 
a representative of a political party to retainers and 
partisans; the discussion is not conducted for 
victory, but for truth; and it is in such a spirit of 
openmindedness that I would ask you to listen to 
the evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. 

The first argument I derive from what is involved 
in a denial of the fact. Either he did, or he did 
not, rise from the dead. Let us take the latter hy- 
pothesis, and see what is involved in it. First, that 
converts into false witnesses the men of the New 
Testament; men like James, and Peter, and Mat- 
thew, and John, and Paul. The obvious consequence 
of a denial of the fact of the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ is the falsification of the testimony of the 
men who, under God, built the New Testament 
Scriptures. The next step is that it overthrows all 
the miracles reported in the New Testament, for any 



228 Credibility of the Resurrection 

course of reasoning, by which the miracle of the 
resurrection may be overthrown, will be found 
strong enough to overthrow all miracles. If there 
be found any criticism acute and penetrating enough 
to undermine the evidences upon which the resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ from the dead is built, that 
criticism is strong enough to undermine the evi- 
dences upon which any miracle is built, and espe- 
cially the miracles of the New Testament. In the 
next place, this theory of denial destroys the 
credibility of the New Testament. There is no 
doubt as to the attitude and teaching of the New 
Testament on the subject; the New Testament 
teaches us directly and positively, it stakes its very 
truthfulness on the affirmation that its chief Char- 
acter rose from the dead, and if he did not rise from 
the dead it is an incredible book. But if you can 
destroy the miracles in the New Testament, if you 
can show that the New Testament is incredible, the 
task is an easy one to show the incredibility of the 
Old Testament and the impossibility of believing in 
its miracles; and the step is easy from this ground 
to a positive denial of the supernatural and miracu- 
lous in all religion. There remains but one step 
more, and that step lands you in absolute negation, 
in which it is declared that no revelation has ever 
been made, that no voice has ever come out of the 
everlasting silence, that there has been no objective 
supernatural disclosure to men of the will of God. 



Credibility of the Resurrection 229 

that we are to-day practically without God and with- 
out hope in the world. Paul was right when he said 
that if Christ had not risen we are yet in our sins. 
Apart from Christ, who knows what sin means? 
Who knows what life means ? Who has any clue to 
any of the mysteries of being, the moment you over- 
throw the supernatural in religion, especially the 
supernatural in the religion of Jesus Christ. I re- 
peat it, there is involved in the denial of the resur- 
rection of Jesus, the denial of every miracle ; there is 
involved in it the falsification of the testimony of 
such men as Peter, Paul, James, and John; there is 
involved in it the destruction of the credibility of the 
New Testament; there is involved in it the destruc- 
tion of the credibility of the Old Testament ; there is 
involved in it the denial of the idea of any revela- 
tion from God, and we are left in the world with 
nothing but the dim light of reason to govern us, 
and with nothing but the dim guesses of natural 
religion and instinct as to our future. The key- 
stone of the Christian arch is the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ from the dead; take that out, and the 
entire arch falls. . . . Destroy that miracle and 
you have cut the capital nerve ; Christianity is dead. 
Whoever is prepared for these consequences is sadly 
welcome to them. Whoever is prepared to deny 
this fact, with all that it logically involves, has un- 
dertaken, in order to get rid of the miracle of Jesus, 
to bring in the most violent and improbable suppo- 



230 Credibility of the Resurrection 

sitions. Which is more rational, which is more 
probable — the theory that God has spoken to us, or 
the theory that he has never spoken to us ? 

I derive an argument for the resurrection of Jesus 
from the calmness, the penetrating and convincing 
spirit of truthfulness, which pervades the New Tes- 
tament. The New Testament is the book of the 
resurrection; it is the book that describes to us the 
manner of the resurrection, so far as the manner is 
given, and especially emphasizes for us the fact. 
What kind of a book is the New Testament? If it 
be not a reliable, credible book, it must have been 
designed and composed either by enthusiasts or im- 
postors. By a religious enthusiast we mean to 
describe a man whose brain is excited, feverish, hot. 
The New Testament does not read as though it were 
the production of an enthusiast ; it has been said by 
some one to be the calmest book in the language of 
man ; there is nothing about it that is impatient, fa- 
natical, feverish. Suppose they were not enthusiasts, 
but impostors : the New Testament has a certain 
quality ( I would describe it by a sentence, because I 
am not able to describe it by a word), a certain 
quality of penetrating the mind of an ingenuous man 
with the sense that it was not gotten up or made to 
order, but that it is a simple, direct, straightforward 
narration of things that occurred. The New Testa- 
ment is thoroughly permeated with this spirit of 
truthfulness, steeped in it, as it were, so that there is 



Credibility of the Resurrection 231 

no escape from the self-evidencing power of this 
calm, penetrating Book, and especially when men are 
in their best experiences and their most luminous 
hours, lifted above the thrall of the flesh and the 
world. From this Book that has this character of 
penetration and persuasion and conviction, I derive 
the argument that it is highly probable that this calm 
account of the resurrection is drawn from the life. 

The character of Christ forbids the supposition 
that he was destroyed by death. It was remarked a 
few years ago by a very acute English essayist and 
critic, now deceased, that he had seen dogs at the 
summit, and men at the foot, of the great Saint 
Bernard in the same day, and on the basis of what 
they were (so far as he could discern) in capacity 
and power, he believed that the dogs at the top were 
better adapted to immortality, and more capable of 
it than the men at the bottom. There is a seed of 
truth in the criticism. It is in substance an equiva- 
lent to this statement; wealth of faculty demands 
proportionate growth, wealth of faculty demands 
commensurate destiny. When you see a simple tool 
you do not expect it to be put to any very high or 
significant uses, but when you find a complex tool 
or machine highly-wrought, finely organized, and 
evidently prepared with great skill and power, and 
at great expense, you expect it to be put to the 
highest uses, and to be carefully preserved for a long 
period of time. Now let us apply these thoughts, 



2$2 Credibility of the Resurrection 

beginning if you will, with the physical nature of 
man. Take some hideous, misshapen, shrunken 
hunchback — not a man in physical being, so much 
as a caricature on physical manhood, and look at 
him in death, and remember him as you knew him in 
life; then contrast with him, a man of noble, 
splendid, godlike form, a man of full height, a man 
with noble eyes, a man with a kingly carriage, a man 
who in his ordinary walk would attract the attention 
of the passer-by, as Webster is said to have done — 
and the very splendor of the temple of this man, as 
compared with the miserable proportions of the 
dwarf, will make you think that in any wisely- 
ordered universe this Apollo-like form ought, in 
some way or other, to be rescued from entire de- 
struction. You rise then into the realm of the intel- 
lect; here is a man who has never learned to read, 
who has never been five miles from the mountain 
hut in which he was born and raised, a man who 
never saw a train of cars, who never saw a steam- 
boat, who never saw more than two thousand people 
together, who never was in a town that contained 
more than eight or nine hundred inhabitants, a man 
full of superstition, besotted with ignorance, gross 
physicalness manacling his spirit; and then take a 
great, splendid intellect, without regard now to its 
moral qualities, a man of large and varied scholar- 
ship, a man ample in all knowledge, a man of drilled, 
whetted, disciplined, and impleted faculties, a man 



Credibility of the Resurrection 233 

quick, fertile, nimble, creative in his imagination, a 
man of wide travel, a man who has read and 
digested the best books of the world — and in the 
presence of this man as compared with the other, 
the expectation begins to arise that such a man has 
too much in him to be destroyed. I rise higher now, 
and include the moral element, and contrast a man, 
a gambler, who so gambles as never to lose, who 
drinks, but so drinks as never to be intoxicated while 
he plays ; a man who studies men, and has made a 
study of them for a quarter of a century, in order to 
induce them to gamble and drink and bet; a man 
who deliberately plans villany of the most wicked 
type : and then alongside of this man I place one 
who is rich and fine and reverent in his moral nature, 
who from his earliest boyhood has given himself to 
that which is noble and good and true and pure, who 
has cast out of him everything in him that was low, 
bestial, groveling, wicked, or fleshly, whose whole 
life has been one of cheerful and uncalculating sac- 
rifice for others. And now, I say that in the pres- 
ence of this latter man, our belief strengthens that 
he, and such as he, ought to survive death. You 
may begin to suspect in the case of the hunchback, 
that such a body as that might just as well be 
blotted out ; but now when you come to the man who 
is Apollo-like in form, who is splendid in scholar- 
ship, in oratory, and in law, a man to whose sen- 
tences the United States Senate has listened with 



234 Credibility of the Resurrection 

delight, and when this man is one also who has laid 
down his life for others, who has not spoken bitter, 
malignant, and envenomed words of his political 
opponents, or of any other man, from whose lips, 
as judged by his fellow townsmen, no word has 
dropped in half a century, that dying he might wish 
to leave unspoken — I say that the idea of blotting 
such a being out is irrational, shocking, unethical. 

O, great is man ! As I listened the other evening 
at the concert, I thought of how music affected us ; 
I thought of our capacity to be affected by elo- 
quence; I thought of our capacity to be affected by 
objects of beauty in the natural world; I reflected 
on how emotion could fire us; I thought of how 
many-sided man was, of how he could be appealed 
to by so many different elements and forces, of how 
he could pray, and also of how he could curse, of 
how his imagination could take wings and fly to the 
uppermost heavens; I reflected how at the head of 
the charging squadron, the gallant McPherson 
could receive the bullet, and die with a smile; I 
reflected on what art and architecture and music and 
science and travel and scholarship and commerce 
and trade, could do for man, by whom, and for 
whom, they were all created, and the thought came 
to me with thrilling power, that was a great, a 
glorious, a magnificent being. 

Now, with these thoughts, let us approach Him 
who is confessed to be the highest of all. Whatever 



Credibility of the Resurrection 235 

be the theory of his being, it is confessed by the most 
ultra-rationalistic and destructive critic, quite as 
freely as it is confessed by the most orthodox theo- 
logian, that whoever he was, from whatever source 
we seek to derive his being, Jesus of Nazareth was at 
the summit of earthly being. We know of no other 
being equal to him, there has never appeared on the 
earth, in human history, any being at all comparable 
to him. One of the strongest evidences alike of his 
super-humanity, and of the truth of the doctrine of 
evolution generally, is that the doctrine of evolution 
applied to him, fails to account for him; while the 
doctrine of evolution applied to other men will, and 
actually does, explain them. No doctrine of Jewish 
descent or antecedents, no doctrine of Palestinian 
environment explains Jesus of Nazareth. He is at 
the very apex of being, transcending in the quality of 
his nature, the best we can think and say. And so 
I declare that there is no stronger argument for his 
resurrection from the dead than the truth, that he 
was too great, too wise, too pure, too holy to be 
mastered by death: that it is a system of immoral 
logic which would seek to force us to the conclusion 
that in a universe like this a being like Christ could 
be absolutely and hopelessly crushed. If he was not 
crushed, he must have risen from the dead. 

Consider again the value of the testimony of the 
original witnesses, especially that of Paul. These 
witnesses were competent; their testimony was not 



236 Credibility of the Resurrection 

hearsay testimony; they saw Jesus, they knew him, 
they companied with him for three years. It is true 
they were ignorant men, but ignorant men know 
their friends as well as scholastic men ; it is true that 
these men were not learned in the ordinary sense of 
the word, but it is not at all likely that they were so 
ignorant as to mistake some other man for Jesus. 
Not only so, but their testimony is peculiarly and 
refreshingly frank; they openly confess that they 
did not believe it at first themselves, and when the 
women came to them, they said, "These things are 
idle tales." They delivered their testimony at the 
time and in the immediate neighborhood of where 
the circumstances were alleged to have occurred. 
The first testimony was not in Gaul or Spain ; they 
did not leave the Asiatic continent and cross over 
to the European continent, and then go afar off to 
the Roman settlements in Spain, where the Roman 
soldiers were, and then declare that far away in 
Palestine a man had risen from the dead. Their 
first testimony was delivered in the immediate 
neighborhood of where the event was alleged to 
have occurred. "This thing was not done in a 
corner." It is to be borne in mind that they de- 
livered their testimony at great cost; they could have 
saved their lives at any time by denying him; the 
burden of their preaching in the beginning was that 
he did rise from the dead, and hundreds of them 
died for this truth, when every man and woman of 



Credibility of the Resurrection 237 

them might have saved their lives by saying, "He 
did not rise ; I did not see him." 

Consider especially the testimony of the apostle 
Paul ! He was not ignorant ; he was born in the 
city of Tarsus, a city famous for its schools and cul- 
ture. After he grew up he was sent to Jerusalem, 
where he was well trained in the Hebrew learning, 
having the wise and tolerant Gamaliel for his 
teacher. He was well versed also in the general 
learning of his time, and on Mars Hill he quoted 
from two Greek poets to the Greek philosophers 
themselves. One of the most destructive of the 
German critics confesses that such a man as Paul 
actually lived, and that he actually wrote five or six 
of the most significant epistles ascribed to him. 
This well born, ambitious, intellectual young man 
was exceedingly mad against the Christians ; he was 
breathing out threatening and slaughter against 
them ; he had witnessed the stoning of Stephen, and 
had arrested one after another of this way, and did 
it with joy and delight, and he was on his way to 
arrest the disciples in Damascus when, according to 
his own statement, Jesus revealed himself to him. 
Paul's constant statement was that he saw him; 
when the Judaizers were following after him, trying 
to turn the people away from following the great 
apostle and his teaching, Paul always settled the 
matter of his disputed apostleship by saying, "I 
saw the Lord." In the lesson read this morning he 



238 Credibility of the Resurrection 

declares that he saw him last of all "as one born 
out of due time." How do you explain such testi- 
mony as this ? Paul was not ignorant ; Paul was not 
unlettered; Paul was not superstitious; Paul was 
not an enthusiast (in the bad sense of that word) ; 
Paul was not an impostor. The idea that Paul was 
an impostor ! Why, the very foundation of our 
morality and civilization are built on Paul after 
Christ! 

Consider also as immensely strengthening the 
argument, the origin and the early victories of 
Christianity. Christianity must have had an origin. 
The word "Christianity" stands to-day for an ob- 
vious and significant fact. Go back to the last 
century, the eighteenth century, and there was some- 
thing that answered to the word Christianity; go 
back to the seventeenth century, and there was some- 
thing that answered to the word Christianity; and 
go back, century after century, until you reach the 
first century of this era — then, still you find some- 
thing that suggests our modern word "Christianity" 
— little meetings of men and women, societies gath- 
ered here and there among the cities of the Roman 
empire, singing hymns to one Christus, whom they 
call a God, meeting at times in caves and secret 
places, and persecuted by the power of the Roman 
empire. How do you account for the origin of 
Christianity? How do you explain the fact of its 
actual appearance in the world? A law of our 



Credibility of the Resurrection 239 

minds requires us to seek an adequate and satisfac- 
tory origin of this great phenomenon called Chris- 
tianity. You cannot explain it by the sword ; there 
were no swords in the hands of these early Chris- 
tians; you cannot explain it by asceticism, for the 
historical truth is that until after the third century 
the Christians were not ascetics ; they had no litera- 
ture, no wealth, no organization. How do you 
explain the fact that issuing from the narrow strip 
of territory between the river Jordan and the 
Mediterranean Sea, humble and plain people such as 
these went forth into the Roman empire, and suc- 
ceeded in less than three centuries in making this 
really the dominant faith, so that in a short time 
thereafter it was adopted by a Roman emperor, 
either from conviction or policy. . . . Who were 
against them? The Jewish Pharisees, the Jewish 
Sadducees, the Egyptian workers in magic and 
necromancy, answering to our modern Spiritualists 
— these were all against them ; the Greek polytheism 
was against them, the Roman emperors were against 
them, the rich patricians were against them, the be- 
sotted multitudes were against them, the venerable 
traditions of the past were against them; all the 
forces and elements you can imagine were arrayed 
against these humble men and women ; and yet, be- 
ginning among the poor, the obscure, the slaves, 
preaching to them the great truths of the gospel, 
they finally conquered. How did they conquer? 



240 Credibility of the Resurrection 

By telling that a good man died in Palestine on the 
cross? Nay, but by telling that the man who died 
in Palestine on the cross, in three days rose from 
the dead, and became henceforth the Lord of life 
and love and glory. If this view is taken, it is easy 
to account for the origin of Christianity ; if this view 
is not taken, there is no existing adequate explana- 
tion of the origin and the power of primitive 
Christianity. 

We are to consider the force of the evidence de- 
rived from the facts of Christian experience. I go 
into a conference meeting of people gathered in a 
room in a building called a church; I seat myself 
quietly near the door and take close note of all that 
is going on. They sing a hymn, the man on the 
platform offers a prayer, after which they sing 
another hymn and he begins to talk about a certain 
person, Jesus by name, and after talking about him 
for five or ten minutes he takes his seat. The people 
present are silent for a few moments, when I see an 
elderly man rise ; as I look at his face from where I 
am seated* it strikes me as a sincere face, not the 
face of a man of great intellectual power, perhaps, 
but an open, honest face, and he relates how this 
Jesus, some forty or fifty years ago, in response to 
an earnest appeal, gave him a sense of the forgive- 
ness of his sins, and that in consequence of this fact 
he entered upon an experience of ever-deepening 
peace and joy. A woman rises and relates how this 



Credibility of the Resurrection 241 

same Jesus, in a time of great trouble and perplexity, 
had come to her invisibly, and supported and sus- 
tained her; a young man narrates how he had 
been led away into evil and dissolute courses, and 
that at a certain time, in a religious meeting, in 
response to his prayers, this Jesus had entered into 
his heart and life, so that he had become dissatisfied 
with this loose way of living and had entered upon a 
new and holy way of living. A number of like 
experiences follow; I get the names of the people, 
and go out into the neighborhood and ask if these 
people are people of ordinary truthfulness, and I am 
told that they are; that their testimony against a 
man charged with murder would be sufficient to 
convict him. I find that there are thousands and 
hundreds of thousands and millions of people testi- 
fying to the same things ; I find that in the last cen- 
tury there were thousands, and hundreds of thou- 
sands, and millions testifying to the same things; 
and so I go back century by century, century by 
century, and find a great body of the best men and 
women that ever lived on the earth testifying to 
these things about Jesus. Are they all mistaken? 
Is it all imagination? Is it all a delusion? It is, 
indeed, all a delusion if he did not rise from the dead, 
but if he rose from the dead, and ascended on high, 
we have at once an easy and natural solution of all 
these otherwise inexplicable facts. 

Gather up all these separate lines of thought, and 



242 Credibility of the Resurrection 

let them converge; reflect upon what is involved in 
a denial of his resurrection; reflect upon the truth- 
speaking character of the New Testament, how it 
penetrates you in your best hours as though it spoke 
the very truth ; reflect on the value of the testimony 
of the original witnesses, and especially upon the 
value of the testimony of the apostle Paul; reflect 
upon the superiority of the character of Jesus, and 
how you are to explain that character if death de- 
stroyed it; remember that Christianity is in the 
world, and that therefore it must have had an 
origin, and that there is no adequate theory of its 
origin except the truth, that Jesus rose from the 
dead; remember the indisputable facts of Christian 
experience, and mark well that there is no explana- 
tion of such a widespread delusion among the 
strongest and purest men and women, of the strong- 
est nations on the globe, unless there be a Jesus who 
rose from the dead and hears our prayers. Focalize 
these lines of light, and then I ask you on this Easter 
Sunday morning, which is more rational, the belief 
that the Pharisees triumphed when they put him to 
death on the cross, and that God, who permitted 
them to triumph, is thus himself an omnipotent 
Pharisee, or the doctrine that the Pharisees were 
wrong and that Jesus Christ was right, and that his 
Father is the eternal God, and that, therefore, he 
rose from the dead? 

"Wherefore comfort one another with these 



Credibility of the Resurrection 243 

words." The apostle Peter must have been a 
strange man. If I should walk into the house of a 
friend and find there eight or ten people wringing 
their hands and crying and sobbing as though their 
hearts would break — if I should stride into the room 
and begin to sing the doxology, would they not 
think that I was a strange man ? If I should go into 
a room where there were a number of people in 
daily expectation of dreadful calamities, calamities 
foretold by a prophet whose prescience had never 
before been wrong, and I should begin to sing a dox- 
ology, what a strange man they would think me to 
be ! If I should go to some one of your houses some- 
times, when death came to it, and should begin the 
solemn service by singing, "Praise God, from whom 
all blessings flow," would you not think that I was 
a strange man? But Peter, twenty-five years after 
the Lord was gone up on high, writing to people 
who were in great trouble, in heaviness from mani- 
fold temptations, writing to people who were poor 
and friendless, the majority of them slaves, writing 
to people who were to pass through still sorer and 
heavier trials, Peter begins this way: "Blessed be 
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which 
according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us 
again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incor- 
ruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away." 
And then in the context he declares that the trial of 



244 Credibility of the Resurrection 

their faith, which is more severe than the refining 
of gold in a furnace, shall be found unto praise and 
honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. 

Many have gone out from us, and many more 
shall go. From some homes a little child: from 
others the maiden ; from others the bright, spotless, 
radiant youth; and here the father, and there the 
mother, and now the strong man lies down in death, 
and now the patient wife gives her children into the 
hands of strangers. O! of that company with 
whom we set out in youth, the company that was 
with us in the old schoolhouse and on the play- 
ground, how many have fallen ! As we journey on 
from year to year, others fall out of the ranks, and 
more and more we will find ourselves alone ; and at 
last we, too, shall go hence and leave our places 
vacant. Beloved, comfort yourselves to-day with 
the thought, that because he mastered death we shall 
master death, that because he triumphed we shall 
triumph, that because he lives we shall live also. 
"Now the God of peace, that brought again from 
the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the 
sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 
make you perfect in every good work to do his will, 
working in you that which is well-pleasing in his 
sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory for- 
ever and ever ! Amen !" 



THE THEISTIC BASIS OF IMMORTALITY 

"For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all 
live unto him." — Luke 20. 38. 

The Sadducees were the rationalizing skeptics of 
Judaism. They rejected, as of divine authority, all 
the Old Testament except the Pentateuch, and de- 
nied the reality of the future life. They came to 
Jesus with their miserable, pettifogging question 
concerning the woman who had seven husbands, 
and supposed that they would be able to confound 
him, and put him to shame, by their inquiry as to 
whose she should be in the resurrection. He met 
and disposed of this question in two ways : first, by 
revealing that the marriage relationship is earthly, 
transitional, temporal, and that it shall not survive 
death. "And Jesus answering said unto them, The 
children of this world marry, and are given in mar- 
riage ; but they which shall be accounted worthy to 
obtain that world, and the resurrection from the 
dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage. 
Neither can they die any more; for they are equal 
unto the angels ; and are the children of God, being 
the children of the resurrection. ,, He most con- 
clusively, however, answered this and all similar 
objections proceeding from men holding their views, 
by solemnly emphasizing the character of God as 



246 Theistic Basis of Immortality 

the living God : "Now that the dead are raised, even 
Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord 
the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the 
God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but 
of the living; for all live unto him." 

The Christian argument for the future life is not 
the one I mean to pursue to-night. The Christian 
argument for the life to come is the argument of 
faith and experience, and it is direct, vital, conclu- 
sive, and unanswerable to its joyous subjects. I do 
not understand the Scriptures at all, if they make 
the assurance of immortality to be the result of a 
reasoning process. The Scriptures teach that they 
shall be certain of immortality who have entered 
into the spiritual life of faith, that they shall be sure 
of their unbroken life in God who now live in God, 
and that the internal evidence of the spirit to its 
present union with the divine life is more than a 
prophecy — it is conclusive of the question of its 
everlasting participation in it. It does not weaken 
— on the contrary, it strengthens — the position of 
Christianity with reference to the great hereafter, 
if we also employ the probable argument, or the 
argument that is derived from the right use of our 
reason working upon the facts of human life. 

It is my purpose to-night to meet on a common 
ground of sympathy for the hour, with one whom I 
would term a theist, a moral theist, but not a Chris- 
tian, and to show him, if he be a reverent, thought- 



Theistic Basis- of Immortality 247 

ful, and candid man, that either he must go into 
atheism or accept the doctrine of immortality; that 
the doctrine of theism is incompatible with the doc- 
trine of man's mortality ; that the only ground upon 
which men can stand and maintain that death is 
annihilation is the ground of sheer materialism and 
atheism; and that he who maintains the existence 
of a personal God, with all that these words imply, 
is driven by that fact to the conclusion that the evi- 
dences on behalf of the future life are so overwhelm- 
ing as to leave him without excuse. Suffer me to 
emphasize my position, for I do not wish to be mis- 
understood : I am supposed to be holding a friendly 
discussion, a discussion for truth, not for victory, 
with a devout and candid theist, or one who believes 
in the doctrine of the existence of a personal God. 
The assumption then is that there is a being who is 
the Author of the worlds, the Framer of our bodies, 
and the Father of our spirits ; that this Being 
possesses sufficient power, wisdom, righteousness, 
justice, and love to account for the phenomena ex- 
hibited in human life. Now there are many men 
in our time who have reached, or, rather, who have 
fallen back to this position. Speaking to this class 
of men, I seek to adduce evidence of the truth that 
the doctrine of immortality has a strong theistic 
basis; that, given such a Divine Being, and reason- 
ing upon the obvious facts of our nature and life, 
the conclusion must come home with peculiar force 



248 Theistic Basis oe Immortality 

to the open and ingenuous mind, that death does not 
hopelessly shatter and destroy our being. 

First, there is a theistic basis for immortality in- 
volved in the significant trend of the universal law 
of development. I might have used the word evo- 
lution : either word will do in this case. The study 
of the phenomena of matter and of mind, by those 
who have given their lives to the investigation of 
such questions, shows that the law of creation is 
that things shall begin in the small and grow to the 
large, in the rough and grow to the fine : that com- 
plexity is not first in the order of being, but crude- 
ness and simplicity; that matter lies at the basis, 
and that the trend of all development, of worlds, of 
plants, of animals, of men, is perpetually away from 
matter in its coarser and grosser manifestations, 
toward something subtler, finer, more complex, less 
sensuous, less palpable, less tangible, but none the 
less real. I will not attempt any continued drawing 
out of this argument as derived from the facts of 
astronomy, or from geology, or from zoology, or 
from any other of the sciences. I assume that you 
are aware that the general truth is that the first plant 
was simple in its organism, and that the highest 
plant is complexly organized. But what I wish 
particularly to emphasize is that the law of human 
development, or evolution, is now and has been in 
the ages past, from rudeness, crudeness, savageism, 
and barbarism, on toward the enlightenment and 



Theistic Basis of Immortality 249 

refinement of civilization, from the life that is fed 
by the eyes, the ears, the tongue, the stomach, and 
the hands, to the life that is fed by thought, devo- 
tion, aspiration, truth, and duty. 

It is immaterial for the present purpose which 
theory of the origin of man is adopted. There are 
two theories, that hitherto universally accepted in 
the realm of theology that man began a perfect 
being morally, and fell; and the now generally 
accepted hypothesis of science that he began as a 
savage, being developed from the animal — and it is 
immaterial in this issue which is accepted — for if 
man fell, the undoubted historical evidence is to 
the effect that after his fall he was a savage, and 
that the trend of all the centuries has been away 
from grossness and coarseness toward refinement, 
thought, and loftiness of spiritual aspiration. 

And now, when I, with my imperfect knowledge 
of these great subjects, trace the hand of the Cre- 
ator in the slow and patient evolution of the organ- 
ism of the world, and of plants, and of animals, and 
lastly of man, and when I reach that door called 
Death, I say that the trend is to make me believe 
that evolution does not stop there, but goes on be- 
yond, for there are as many reasons for continuing 
man in existence as there ever were to bring him 
into existence; yea, there are ten thousand more. 
Evolution, or development, whatever you choose to 
call it, if it be studied in reference to this universal 



250 Theistic Basis of Immortality 

law, brings us up to the point where the law of 
continuity requires us to demand of the theistical 
evolutionist the grounds for his belief that death 
stops evolution. Rather let us hold to the New 
Testament theory of development, that life begins 
here and goes beyond. If it does not, if death 
ends all, if development ceases at the door of the 
grave, then I ask the theist to explain to me why his 
God should ordain development to proceed so far 
and no farther, who knows that death is the cessa- 
tion of development? 

The broken, partial, fragmentary, incomplete 
character of our life ; the waste of glorious faculties, 
if death be an irreparable catastrophe, justify us in 
demanding another life. I speak reverently when I 
say that in the history of theological science we 
have reached a time when we may begin to talk 
about the rights of the creature. It is not true, as 
it has sometimes been baldly stated, that because 
God made me he can do as he pleases with me. If 
so, he is not an ethical God. If he may do as he 
pleases with me because he is stronger than I am, 
then I may do as I please with a cripple because I 
can crush him. The creature has moral rights. It 
is a fact not to be disputed that man, brought into 
existence as he has been, with such a nature as he 
unquestionably possesses, has certainly some right 
to inquire as to the meaning of his being. Irrever- 
ent thus to inquire! Why, then, did Abraham, 



Theistic Basis of Immortality 251 

praying to God, say : "Shall not the Judge of all the 
earth do right?" Was he in doubt as to whether 
God would do right ? Did not the prophet Jeremiah 
say: "Righteous art thou altogether, O Lord, yet 
let me talk with thee concerning thy judgments : 
wherefore do the wicked prosper?" Certainly in 
the development of Christianity and in our study of 
God we have reached that place where we may rev- 
erently ask, being brought here as we are, on condi- 
tions we never chose, with natures we did not select 
— whether we, too, in the sight of our Father, have 
not some rights. 

The first right we have is a fair chance to come 
to ourselves, and to our best selves. God guaran- 
tees that right to a fly; a fly comes to itself; all 
there is in its nature is permitted to come out; but 
a man does not come to himself here. The majority 
of men, an overwhelming majority of men, have 
scarcely any idea of the potent and splendid faculties 
slumbering in them. And shall God bring out all 
that is in an insect, that flits about for an hour in 
the summer twilight, and then to the best and loftiest 
being he has ever made, the being to whom he 
gave the dominion of the world, and whom he has 
crowned with glory and honor, shall he give him no 
chance to come to himself ? And yet Sir Isaac New- 
ton, when he was an old man, said he did not know 
how he appeared to other people, but to himself he 
seemed like a little child picking up a few pebbles 



252 Theistic Basis of Immortality 

of truth here and there upon the shore, while the 
great ocean of truth lay unexplored before him. I 
go down to see a great shipbuilder, and when he 
has his splendid vessel all ready to launch, I ask 
permission to go over it, and he explains it all to 
me, and shows me its various parts; it is magnifi- 
cently fitted up, and while I am looking at the vessel 
I see servants, almost an army of them, carrying 
heavy burdens on board. "What is in that burden ?" 
I ask. "Gold," is the reply. "What is in that cas- 
ket?" "Jewels of value which cannot be estimated." 
"Where goes the ship?" "It sinks in midocean." 
"After you are so careful to fashion it, and load it 
with the most precious cargo, you take her out and 
she goes down in midocean, cargo and all?" "Yes, 
sir." "And you continue to make ships and freight 
them in this way, knowing all the time that every 
one of them will be lost?" "Yes, sir." Would he 
not be a strange shipbuilder? And do you think 
God would make such a being as man, endow him 
as he has endowed him, fill him with such a wealth 
of faculty, knowing that every man would come to 
wreck and ruin? What kind of a God is that? I 
am dealing to-night with the theist, a man who be- 
lieves in the existence of God and questions the 
reality of revelation and immortality. How do you 
reconcile such a theory of life as that with your 
idea of God? Does it not impugn his wisdom? 
Would it not impugn the wisdom of a shipbuilder 



Theistic Basis of Immortality 253 

to make ships this way and give them such a cargo, 
knowing that every one of them would be lost? 
And will God populate the globe as he does, will 
God keep up this great strife of human existence 
as he does, and then sweep us all out at last into 
Lethean darkness ? Never ! The theist must accept 
immortality or deny God. 

Consider the failure of justice in this world. I 
do not say the "apparent" failure of justice ; that is 
too cheap a way to face the facts of human life. I 
pass on the streets a woman sixty years of age, who 
makes her living by washing. She is carrying home 
from the late market the cheap food she was able to 
buy after the wealthy had made their selections, 
and she is now going to her humble home. She 
has lived a pure, blameless, prayerful Christian life. 
She had one son, and she reared him in goodness, 
in kindness, in patience, with a great wealth of love 
— and he is a murderer! And I pass on the next 
block — or, rather, he passes me in his carriage — a 
man worth a million and a half of dollars, made in 
the wholesale liquor business, and his son is in Con- 
gress, and he has not attended a church, or offered 
a prayer, for a score of years. Now, let them both 
be smitten with lightning, and I tell you it would 
have been better for that woman if she had never 
been born if there is no hereafter. Now, that is not 
apparent injustice. On the theory of mortality, on 
the theory that death irreparably destroys that which 



254 Theistic Basis of Immortality 

we call our being, then I declare, not that that 
woman has been treated with apparent injustice, 
but with absolute injustice, for she has done right 
through her whole life up to the best light she had, 
and there is her reward! And on the theory that 
God has in him the ethical element as the supreme 
element in his nature, righteousness blossoming into 
love ; on the theory that there is back of every man 
and woman a personal Moral Ruler — on this theory 
we must accept immortality or be driven into athe- 
ism. Let the theist who denies revelation and 
immortality, square this class of facts with the 
righteousness of God. I see a young man, the 
graduate of a college, the child of many prayers, 
the youth of many noble ambitions, wasting away 
with consumption. I stand by him as he goes out 
into the shadows and hear his last words, and over 
his open grave I read the words of comfort the 
church puts into my mouth. Living in the same 
town in splendid health, boasting that for thirty 
years he had never lost an hour from ill health, 
is a man who strives by every means to induce the 
college students to gamble with him, and he always 
wins. He studies the passions and appetites of un- 
tried and callow youths, and employs bad men and 
worse women to ruin them ; and he lives on in com- 
fort, in health, in local political power, lives on to 
decide in a nominating convention which of two 
men shall represent his state in the United States 



Theistic Basis of Immortality 255 

Senate; and over against the grave of the young, 
ingenuous, brave, chivalrous man I place this villain 
— and then you tell me that there is no hereafter, 
that God permits this kind of a man to live, and 
that kind of a man to die and come to naught! 
There is no morality in your logic. The only athe- 
ist I ever knew, and I think he was cured of it 
before he died, was a man who was kind enough 
to invite me to spend a summer with him in his 
cottage, on the coast of Massachusetts, and gave me 
my first view of the sea. As we walked along the 
beach one day, he said : "If I was your God, I would 
have made this sea so that when missionaries went 
abroad it would never allow them or their ship to 
sink, and I would have so made it that when robbers 
and murderers are on it, it would swallow them up ; 
but it knows neither missionary or robber." He was 
right if this life be all. Either God must give us a 
life to come, either the inequalities of the present 
life must be redressed and compensated for here- 
after, or, as my mind is constituted, I see no suffi- 
cient evidence of a Moral Ruler of the universe. 

The cruelty and deceit involved in our deep and 
indestructible longing for a better life, if death 
destroys us, must drive the theist into atheism, or 
into a belief in immortality. Now, I do not mean to 
argue from the yearning to the reality to-night; I 
mean simply to emphasize the fact of the yearning. 
Have you ever met a man who did not desire immor- 



256 Theistic Basis of Immortality 

tality? You may have met men who denied it, you 
may have met men who doubted it, but I never met 
a man who did not desire it. I spent a whole night 
once with a man who doubted it, and as we bade 
each other good-bye in the morning I asked him, 
"Would not you be glad if it was so?" And I never 
saw tears in his eyes but that once, and his answer 
was in his tears. Would not you be glad if it was 
so? The yearning is deep and indestructible in us 
all. Why this yearning on the theory of mortality ? 
This yearning is not necessary for the purposes of 
the present life. I take the theist on his ground of 
a personal God of righteousness, justice, equity, and 
holiness, and he will certainly confess that this yearn- 
ing is known to God, and he must confess, if he be 
a man at all given to logical reasoning, that this 
yearning in us has its remote ultimate cause in God, 
as the Creator of our being. For the purposes of 
the present life, I repeat, we do not need it; and 
yet we have it. Now, why ? Why does God, know- 
ing, as he does and must know, that we possess it 
by all manner of promises and by all manner of 
revelations that come to us from nature and life — 
why does he fan it until at last it becomes a perfect 
flame of desire? You would never treat your child 
so. You cannot imagine the basest man you ever 
knew treating his child so; you cannot imagine a 
father who would take a child and begin to create 
in its heart a desire which the father knew at the 



Theistic Basis of Immortality 257 

time he never could fulfill, or intended to fulfill, and 
then through all the years of life feeding that desire, 
and feeding it, and feeding it, until at last in some 
emergency in the child's life it would come to its 
father and ask for that for which he had created 
the desire, and then the father would step back and 
say: "It shall not be yours," and with one blow 
strike him dead. And yet you ask me to believe 
that God, my Father, created me with this yearning 
and desire, and then at last that which we call 
Death shall step in and rob me of existence, with 
the full knowledge and consent of God ! Why seek 
to evade the force of all this by telling me that 
I shall not know that I was cheated? God forbid 
that I should defend him so? He knows we are 
being cheated. I may not know it, but he knows 
it, and whatever happens to the idea of God, the 
righteousness of Jehovah must be left whole and 
sound; but there is no righteousness if God makes 
us to desire immortality, and then cheats and de- 
ceives us by destroying us. 

If extinction be the end of our life and work, then 
our faculties, and our best faculties, were made on 
purpose to deceive us. Man has orders and ranges 
of faculties, he has rank above rank of capacities and 
powers. The lowest faculties a man has never sug- 
gest immortality; nothing that is in our power to 
eat food suggests immortality; nothing physical 
about us suggests it, and Bishop Foster was right 



258 Theistic Basis of Immortality 

when he said that the body is a mere accident, and 
that we will drop it at the grave and have no more 
to do with it. There is nothing in the body that 
suggests immortality ; there is nothing in mine, that 
I want to be immortal, that I have found out yet. 
Then when you rise into the region of the intellec- 
tual faculties, the first is perception, but there is 
nothing in the mere mental act of perception that 
suggests immortality. But when you rise higher, to 
the social faculties or appetencies of our nature, they 
begin to suggest a perfect and eternal society; you 
rise higher, to the reasoning or intuitive faculties, 
and they more and more prophesy it ; you rise into 
the realm of conscience, and it prophesies it with 
tremendous power ; you rise into the region of spir- 
itual instinct, faith, worship, aspiration, and im- 
mortality, on some bright and glorious days, is like 
the clear outshining of the sun. The best faculties 
of our being, and the finest experiences of our life, 
suggest immortality; but the lowest do not. The 
day that a man makes a false entry in a book he 
does not think of immortality unless conscience 
comes to lash him; the night that a man has been 
a beast is not the night the stars suggest a home 
beyond them; not when you are gross, and vile, 
and dishonest, and selfish, and greedy, does immor- 
tality appear reasonable; but on the days when you 
are honest, when you are clean, when you are pa- 
tient, when you are sympathetic and brotherly, when 



Theistic Basis of Immortality 259 

you are true, when you are worshipful — then it is 
that immortality is supremely reasonable. And 
now, what are we to think of One who would so 
make us as that the best faculties we have are unre- 
liable? for if there be no immortality, then the ver- 
dict of our best faculties in their purest hours is 
a false one. Let me be misled by what I taste, let 
me be misled by the sight of my eyes when I behold 
the mirage on the desert, let me be misled by the 
hearing of my ears; but let me never be misled by 
conscience, and reason, and faith, for then the best I 
have was made to lead me wrong. Who can believe 
that? Who can believe that? And yet that is the 
position of the theist who denies immortality. 

You call this a probable argument, but if I had 
presented here an argument with the same degree 
of probability, to the effect that there was a large 
diamond mine of untold wealth within two miles of 
Brooklyn, four fifths of the men in this congregation 
would be hunting for it to-morrow morning as soon 
as they could see ! If I could only convince the men 
here to-night, and the crowds in New York and 
Brooklyn, that there was a large diamond mine, rich 
in the most costly diamonds, within two miles of 
Brooklyn, it would require all the policemen of the 
two cities to keep them from trampling each other to 
death in their hunt for the treasure. A probable 
argument! And if there was as probable an argu- 
ment that you would be smitten with a dreadful dis- 



260 Theistic Basis of Immortality 

ease in a few weeks, every one of you would see 
your family physician before you went to bed to- 
night. A probable argument! And if there was 
as probable an argument that you would get a for- 
tune by going to Omaha and living there for five or 
six years, those of you who are not rich would be 
on the first train to Omaha to-morrow morning. 
And yet, with this same degree of probability, how 
many of you will go away from this place and these 
thoughts calmly reasoning about it, wondering after 
all whether it be true! You would not treat dia- 
monds that way. Will you do more for diamonds 
than for your priceless spirit? 

Brother men, if I had no other arguments than 
these, I might fairly exhort you to live worthy of 
your immortality; but I have another argument, the 
argument from experience, and with that will con- 
clude all I have to say to-night. It is this : that after 
many struggles, that after standing over graves that 
hid for me the choice, the noble, the brave, the true, 
that after much reading and some reflection, that 
after many lonely, doubtful, and despairing hours, 
when I was alone with the problem of my nature, 
my work, and my destiny, I have found in the Christ 
life within an evidence of my immortality which 
makes it more real to me than the life I am now 
living, which makes death but the beginning of our 
life, which makes this world seem to me as a small 
room, in which we children are playing, and know 



Theistic Basis of Immortality 261 

not how to leave it. Yonder is a door which leads 
out to the light beyond, and we are afraid to put 
our hands on the knob ; but I have learned that when, 
despite our fears, and prayers, and tears, the door 
must open, our true eternal life shall begin to be. 
"For I know whom I have believed, and am per- 
suaded that he is able to keep that which I have 
committed unto him against that day." "For I 
know that if my earthly house of this tabernacle be 
dissolved, I have a building of God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." 



MAR SO'. 1905 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2006 

PreservationTechnoiogies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





017 731 344 



